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MEMOIR 



CHARLES LAMB 



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CHARLES LAMB 



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BARRY CORNWALL 



BOSTON 
ROBERTS BROTHERS 

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W. L. Slu>*maker 
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STEREOTYPED AT THE 
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY, 

4 Spring La7ie. 



Presswork by John Wilson ajjfi Son. 



PREFACE 



In my seventy-seventh year, I have been 
invited to place on record my recollections of 
Charles Lamb. 

I am, I believe, nearly the only man now 
surviving who knew much of the excellent 
" Elia." Assuredly I knew him more inti- 
mately than any other existing person, during 
the last seventeen or eighteen years of his life. 

In this pi-edicament, and because I am proud 
to associate my name with his, I shall endeavor 
to recall former times, and to bring my old 
friend before the eyes of a new generation. 

I request the " courteous reader " to accept, 
for what they are worth, these desultory labors 
of a lover of letters ; and I hope that the 
advocate for modern times will try to admit into 

A (5) 



6 PREFACE. 

the circle of his sympathy my recollections of 
a fine Genius departed. 

No harm — possibly some benefit — will ac- 
crue to any one who may consent to extend 
his acquaintance to one of the rarest and most 
delicate of the Humorists of England. 

B. W. Procter. 

Afay, 1866. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Page 
Iwtroduclion. — Biography : Few Events. — One pre- . 
dominant. — His Devotion to it. — Tendency to Lit- 
erature. — First Studies, —f Influence of Antique 
Dwellings, -f— Early Friends. — Humor. — Quali- 
ties of Biad. — \SympatJiy for neglected Objects.. — 
A Nonconformist. — Predilections. — Character. — 
Taste. — Style 11 

CHAPTER II. 

Birth and Parentage. — Christ's Hospital. — South 
Sea House and India House. — Condition of Fam- 
ily. — Death of Ifother. — Mary in'AsyUom. — John 
Lamh. — Charles's Means of Living. — His Home. 

— Despondency. — Alice W. — Brother and Sister. 31 

(7) 



61 



8 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 

Jem White. — Coleridge. — Lamh's Inspiration. — 
Early Letters. — Poem published. — Charles Lloyd. 

— Lilcin,g for Burns, ^c. — Quakerism. — Robert 
Southey. — Southey and Coleridge. — Antijacobin. 

— Rosamond Gray. — 'George Dyer. — Manning. 

— Mary's Illnesses. — 3Iigrations. — Hester Sa- 
vory 

CHAPTER IV. 



{Migrations.') — " John Woodvil." — BlacTcesmoor. 
— Wordsworth. — RicJcman. — Godwin. — Visit 
to the Lakes. — 3Iorning Post. — Hazlitt. — Nel- 
son. — Ode to Tobacco. — Dramatic Specimens, 
^c. — Inner Temple Lane. — Reflector. — Hogarth 
and Sir J. Reynolds, — Leigh Hunt. — Lamb, 
Hazlitt, and Hunt. — Russell Street and The- 
atrical Friends 100 

CHAPTER V. 

3Iy RecollerMons. — Russell Street. — Personal Ap- 
pearance. — Planner. — Tendency of Mind. — Prej- 



CONTENTS. 9 

udices. — Alleged Excesses. — Mode of Life. — Love 
of SnioTiing. — His Lodgings. — His Sister. — 
Costume. — Reading aloud. —^Tastes and Opin- 
ions. -+ London. — Love of Boohs. — Charity. — 
Wednesday Parties. — His Companions. — Epi- 
taph upon them, 142 

CHAPTER VI. 

London Magazine. — Contributors. — Transfer of 
Magazine. — Monthly Dinners and Visitors. — 
ColehrooJc Cottage. — Lamb's Walks. — Essays of 
Mia ; Their Excellence and Cliaracter.. — En- 
larged Acquaintance. — Visit to Paris. — Miss 
Isola. — Quarrel with Southey. — Leaves India 
House. '— Leisure. — Amicus Redivivus. — Ed- 
ward Irving. 179 

CHAPTER VII. 

Specimen of Lamb's Humor. — Death of Mr. Nor- 
ris. — Garrick Plays. — Letters to Barton. — 
Opinions on Boohs. — Breakfast with Mr. N. P. 
Willis. — Moves to Enfield. — Caricature of Lamb. 



lO CONTENTS, 

— ATbwms and Acrostics. — Pains of Leisure. — 
The Barton Correspondence. — Death of Hazlitt. 

— Munden's Acting and Quitting the Stage. — 
Lamb becomes a Boarder. — Moves to Edvno^iton. — 
Metropolitan Attachments. — Death of Coleridge. 

— Lamb's Fall and Death. — Death of Mary 
Lamb 228 

POSTSCRIPT. 273 

APPENDIX. .279 



CHARLES LAMB. 



CHAPTER I. 



Introduction. — JBiography : Fexv Events. — 
One predojninant. — His Devotion to it. — 
Tendency to Literature. — First Studies. — 
Influence of Antique Dxvellings. — Early 
Friends. — Httmor. — ^lalities ofl Mind. 
— Sympathy for neglected Objects. — A Noit- 
conformist. — Predilectioizs. — Character. — 
Taste. — Style. 

THE biography of Charles Lamb lies with- 
in a narrow compass. It comprehends 
only few events. His birth and parentage, and 
domestic sorrows ; his acquaintance with re- 
markable men ; his thoughts and habits ; and 
his migrations from one home to another, — con- 
stitute the sum and substance of his almost un- 



12 ONE OBJECT. 

eventful history. It is a history with one event, 
predominant. 

For this reason, and because I, in common 
with many others, hold a book needlessly large 
to be a great evil, it is my intention to confine 
the present . memoir within moderate limits. 
My aim is not to write the "Life and Times" 
of Charles Lamb. Indeed-, Lamb had no in- 
fluence on his own times. He had little or 
nothing in common with his generation, which 
was almost a stranger to him. There was no 
reciprocity between them. His contemplations 
were retrospective. He was, when living, the 
centre of a small social circle ; and I shall 
therefore deal incidentally with some of its 
members. In other respects, this memoir will 
contain only what I recollect and what I have 
learned from authentic sources of my old friend. 

The fact that distinguished Charles Lamb 
from other men was his entire devotion to one 
grand and tender purpose. There is, probably, 
a romance involved in every life. In his life it 



EIS DEVOTION TO IT. 13 

exceeded that of others. In gravity, in acute- 
ness, in his noble battle with a great calamity, 
it was beyond the rest. Neither pleasure nor 
toil ever distracted him from his holy purpose. 
Everything was made subservient to it. He had 
an insane sister, who, in a moment of uncontrol- 
lable madness, had unconsciously destroyed her 
own mother ; and to protect and save this sister 
— a gentle woman, who had watched like a 
mother over his own infancy — the whole length 
of his life was devoted. What he endured, 
through the space of nearly forty years, from 
the incessant fear and frequent recurrence of his 
sister's insanity, can now only be conjectured. 
In this constant and uncomplaining endurance, 
and in his steady adherence to a great principle 
of conduct, his life was heroic. 

We read of men giving up all their days to 
a single object — to religion, to vengeance, to 
some overpowering selfish wish ; of daring acts 
done to avert death or disgrace, or some oppress- 
ing misfortune. We read mythical tales of 



14 TENDENCY TO LITERATURE. 

friendship ; but we do not recollect any instance 
in which a great object has been so unremit- 
tingly carried out throughout a whole life, in 
defiance of a thousand difficulties, and of num- 
berless temptations, straining the good resolution 
to its utmost, except in the case of our poor clerk 
of the India House. 

This was, substantially, his life. His actions, 
thoughts, and sufferings were all concentred on 
this one important end. It was what he had to 
do ; it was in his reach ; and he did it, therefore, 
manfully, religiously. He did not waste his 
mind on too many things ; for whatever too 
much expands the mind weakens it ; nor on 
vague or multitudinous thoughts and specula- 
tions ; nor on dreams or things distant or un- 
attainable. However interesting, they did not 
absorb him, body and soul, like the safety and 
welfare of his sister. 

Subject to this primary unflinching purpose, 
the tendency of Lamb's mind pointed strongly 
towards literature. He 'did not seek literature, 



FIRST STUDIES. 15 

however ; and he gained from it nothing except 
his fame. He worked laboriously at the India 
House from boyhood to manhood ; for . many 
years without repining ; although he miist have 
been conscious of an intellect qualified to shine 
in other ways than in entering up a trader's 
books. None of those coveted offices, which 
bring money and comfort in their train, ever 
reached Charles Lamb. He w^as never under 
that bounteous shower which government lead- 
ers and persons of influence direct towards the 
heads of their adherents. No Dives ever selected 
him for his golden bounty. No potent critic 
ever shouldered him up the hill of fame. In the 
absence of these old-fashioned helps, he was con- 
tent that his ovvrn unassisted efforts should gain 
for him a certificate of capability to the world, 
and that the choice reputation which he thus 
earned should, with his own qualities, bring 
round him the unenvying love of a host of 
friends. 

Lamb had always been a studious boy and a 



1 6 LOVE OF RE AD IN a. 

great reader ; and after passing through Christ's 
Hospital and the South Sea House, and being 
for some years in the India House, this instinc- 
tive passion of his mind (for literature) broke 
out. In this he was, without doubt, influenced 
by the example and counsel of Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge, his school-fellow and friend, for 
whom he entertained a high and most tender 
respect. The first books which he loved to read 
were volumes of poetry, and essays on serious 
and religious themes. The works of all the old 
poets, the history of Quakers, the biography of 
Wesley, the conti'oversial papers of Priestley, 
and other books on devout subjects, sank into his 
mind. From reading he speedily rose to writ- 
ing ; from being a reader he became an author. 
His first writings were entirely serious. These 
were verses, or letters, wherein religious thoughts 
and secular- criticisms took their places in turn ; 
or they were grave dramas, which exhibit and 
lead to the contemplation of character, and which 
nourish those moods out of which humor ulti- 
mately arises. 



PECULIAR HUMOR. 17 

So much has been ah^eady pubHshed, that it is 
needless to encumber this short narrative with 
any minute enumeration of the quahties which 
constitute his station in literature ; but I shall, 
as a part of my task, venture to refer to some 
of those which distinguish him from other 
writers. 

Lamb's very curious and peculiar humor 
showed itself early. It was perhaps born of 
the solitude in which his childhood passed 
away ; perhaps cherished by the seeds of mad- 
ness that were in him, that were in his sister, 
that were in the ancestry from which he sprung. 
Without doubt, it caught color from the scenes 
in the midst of which he grew up. Born in 
the Temple, educated in Christ's Hospital, and 
passed onwards to the South Sea House, his 
first visions were necessarily of antiquity. The 
grave old buildings, tenanted by lawyers and 
their clerks, wei'e replaced by " the old and 
awful cloisters " of the School of Edward ; and 
these in turn gave way to the palace of the 
2 



1 8 EARLY FRIENDS. 

famous Bubble, now desolate, with its unpeopled 
Committee Rooms, its pictures of Governors of 
Qiieen Anne's time, " its dusty maps of Mexico, 
dim as dreams, and soundings of the Bay of 
Panama." These things, if they impressed his 
mind imperfectly at first, in time formed them- 
selves into the shape of truths, and assumed sig- 
nificance and impoi'tance ; as words and things, 
glanced over hastily in childhood, grow and 
ripen, and enrich the understanding in after 
days. 

Lamb's earliest friends and confidants, with 
one exception, were singularly void of wit and 
the love of jesting. His sister was grave ; 
his father gradually sinking into dotage : Cole- 
ridge was immersed in religious subtilties and 
poetic dreams ; and Charles Lloyd, sad and 
logical and analytical, was the antithesis of 
all that is lively and humorous. But thoughts 
and images stole in from other quarters ; and 
Lamb's mind was essentially quick and pro- 
ductive. Nothing lay barren in it ; and much 



QUALITIES OF MIND. " 19 

of what was planted there, grew, and spread, 
and became beautiful. He himself has sown 
the seeds of humor in many English hearts. 
His own humor is essentially English. It is 
addressed to his own countrymen ; to the mea 
" whose limbs were made in England ; " not 
to foreign intellects, nor perhaps to the uni- 
versal mind. Humor, which is the humor of 
a man (of the writer himself or of his crea- 
tions), must frequently remain, in its fragrant 
blossoming state, in the land of its birth. 
Like some of the most delicate wines and 
flowers, it will not bear travel. 

Apart from his humor and other excel- 
lences, Charles Lamb combined qualities such 
as are seldom united in one person ; which in- 
deed seem not easily reconcilable with each 
other : namely, much prudence, with much 
generosity ; great tenderness of heart, with a 
firm will. To these was superadded that racy 
humor which has served to distinguish him 
from other men. There is no other writer, 



20 SYMPATHY. 

that I know of, in whom tenderness, and good 
sense, and humor are so intunately and hap- 
pily blended ; no one whose view of men and 
things is so invariably generous, and true, and 
independent. These qualities made their way 
slowly and fairly. They were not taken up 
as a matter of favor or fancy, and then 
abandoned. They struggled through many 
years of neglect, and some of contumely, be- 
fore they took their stand triumphantly, and 
as things not to be ignored by any one. 

Lamb pitied all objects which had been 
neglected or despised. Nevertheless the lens 
through VN^hich he viewed the objects of his 
pity, — beggars, and chimney-sweepers, and con- 
victs, — was always clear : it served him even 
when their short-comings were to be contem- 
plated. For he never paltered with truth. 
He had no weak sensibilities, few tears for 
imaginary griefs. But his heart opened wide 
to real distress. He never applauded the 
fault ; but he pitied the offender. He had a 



A NONCONFORMIST. 21 

word of compassion for the sheep-stealer, who 
was arrested and lost his ill-acquired sheep, 
" his first, last, and only hope of a mutton 
pie ; " and vented his feelings in that sonnet 
(rejected by the magazines) which he has 
called " The Gypsey's Malison." Although he 
was willing to acknowledge merit when it 
was successful, he preferred it, perhaps, when 
it was not clothed with prosperity. 

By education and habit, he was a Unita- 
rian. Indeed, he was a true Nonconformist in 
all things. He was not a dissenter by imita- 
tion, nor from any deep principle or obstinate 
heresy ; nor was he made servile and obedient 
by formal logic alone. His reasoning always 
rose and streamed through the heart. He 
liked a friend for none of the ordinary rea- 
sons ; because he was famous, or clever, or 
powerful, or popular. He at once took issue 
with the previous verdicts, and examined the 
matter in his ow^n way. If a man was unfor- 
tunate, he gave him money. If he was calum- 



22 , PBEDILEOTIONS. 

niated, he accorded him sympathy. He gave 
freely ; not to merit, but to want. 

He pursued his own fancies, his own pre- 
dilections. He did not neglect his own in- 
stinct (which is always true), and aim at 
things foreign to his nature. He did not cling 
to any superior intellect, nor cherish any infe- 
rior humorist or wit. 

Perhaps no one ever thought more inde- 
pendently. He had great enjoyment in the 
talk of able men, so that it did not savor of 
form or pretension. He liked the strenuous 
talk of Hazlitt, who never descended to fine 
words. He liked the unafl:ected, quiet conver- 
sation of Manning, the vivacious, excursive 
talk of Leigh Hunt. He heard with wonder- 
ing admiration the monologues of Coleridge. 
Perhaps he liked the simplest talk the best ; 
expressions of pity or sympathy, or affection 
for others ; from young people, who thought 
and said little or nothing about themselves. 

He had no craving for popularity, nor even 



TREDILECTIONB. 23 

for fame. I d^ not recollect any passage in 
his writings, nor any expression in his talk, 
which runs counter to ray opinion. In this 
respect he aeems to have differed from ^ILLton 
(who desired feme, like " Blind Thamjris and 
blind ilaeonides"), and to have rather resem- 
bled Shakespeare, who w^as indifferent to fame 
or assured of it ; but perhaps he resembled no 
one. 

Lamb had not many personal antipathies, 
but he had a strong aversion to pretence and 
false repute. In particular, he resented the 
adulation of the epitaph-mongers -^'ho endeav- 
ored to place Garrick, the actor, on a level 
with Shakespeare. Of that greatest of all po- 
ets he has said such things as I imagine 
Shakespeare himself w^ould have liked to hear. 
He has also uttered brave words in behalf of 
Shakespeare's contemporary dramatists ; partly 
because they deser\'ed thern, partly because 
they were unjustly forgotten. The sentence of 
oblivion, passed by ignorant ages on the rep- 



24 PREDILECTIONS. 

utation of these fine authors, he has annulled, 
and forced the world to confess that preced- 
ing judges were incompetent to entertain the 
case. 

I cannot imagine the mind of Charles Lamb, 
even in early boyhood, to have been weak or 
childish. In his first letters you see that he 
was a thinker. He is for a time made som- 
bre by unhappy reflections. He is a reader 
of thoughtful books. The witticisms which he 
coined for sixpence each (for the Morning 
Chronicle) had, no doubt, less of metallic 
lustre than those which he afterwards medi- 
tated ; and which were highly estimated. 
Effodiuntur opes. His jests were never the 
mere over-flowings of the animal spirits, but 
were exercises of the mind. He brought the 
wisdom of old times and old writers to bear 
upon the taste and intellect of his day. What 
was in a manner foreign to his age, he nat- 
uralized and cherished. And he did this with 
judgment and great delicacy. His books 



PBEDILE0TI0N8. 2$ 

never unhinge or weaken the mind, but bring 
before it tender and beautiful thoughts, which 
charm and nourish it as only good books can. 
No one was ever worse from reading Charles 
Lamb's writings ; but many have become 
wiser and better. Sometimes, as he hints, 
" he affected that dangerous figure, irony ; " 
and he would sometimes interrupt grave dis- 
cussion, when he thought it too graye, with 
some light jest, which nevertheless was " not 
quite irrelevant." Long talkers, as he con- 
fesses, " hated him ; " and assuredly he hated 
long talkers. 

In his countenance you might sometimes 
read — what may be occasionally read on al- 
most all foreheads — the letters and lines of 
old, unforgotten calamity. Yet there was at 
the bottom of his nature a buoyant self-sus- 
taining strength ; for although he encountered 
frequent seasons of mental distress, his heart 
recovered itself in the interval, and rose and 
sounded, like music played to a happy tune. 



26 TASTE. 

Upon fit occasion, his lips could shut in a 
firm fashion ; but the gentle smile that played 
about his face showed that he was always 
ready to relent. His quick eye never had 
any sullenness : his mouth, tender and trem- 
ulous, showed that there would be nothing 
cruel or inflexible in his nature. 

On referring to his letters, it must be con- 
fessed that in literature Lamb's taste, like that 
of all others, was at first imperfect. For 
taste is a portion of our judgment, and must 
depend a good deal on our experience, and 
on our opportunities of comparing the claims 
of different pretenders. Lamb's affections 
swayed him at all times. He sympathized 
deeply with Cowper and his melancholy his- 
tory, and at first estimated his verse, perhaps, 
beyond its strict value. He was intimate 
with Southey, and anticipated that he would 
rival Milton. Then his taste was at all 
times peculiar. He seldom worshipped the 
Idol which the multitude had set up. I was 



STYLE. 27 

never able to prevail on him to admit that 
"Paradise Lost" was greater than "Paradise 
Regained ; " I believe, indeed, he liked the 
last the best. He would not discuss the Po- 
etiy of Lord Byron or Shelley, with a view 
of being convinced of their beauties. Apart 
from a few points like these, his opinions 
must be allowed to be sound ; almost always ; 
if not as to the style of the author, then as 
to the quality of his book or passage which 
he chose to select. And his own style was 
always good, from the beginning, in verse as 
well as in prose. His first sonnets are un- 
affected, well sustained, and well written. 

I do not know much of the opinion of 
others ; but to my thinking the style of Charles 
Lamb, in his " Elia," and in the letters writ- 
ten by him in the later (the last twenty) years 
of his life, is full of grace ; not antiquated, 
but having a touch of antiquity. It is self- 
possessed, choice, delicate, penetrating, his 
words running into the innermost sense of 



2S STYLE. 

things. It is not, indeed, adapted to the 
meanest capacity, but is racy, and chaste, after 
his fashion. Perhaps it is sometimes scrip- 
tural : at all events it is always earnest and sin- 
cere. He was painfully in earnest in his advo- 
cacy of Hazlitt and Hunt, and in his pleadings 
for Hogarth and the old dramatists. Even in his 
humor, his fictitious (as well as his real) per- 
sonages have a character of reality about thein 
which gives them their standard value. They 
all ring like true coin. In conversation he 
loved to discuss persons or books, and seldom 
ventured upon the stormy sea of politics ; his 
intimates lying on the two opposite shores, 
Liberal and Tory. Yet, when occasion moved 
him, he did not refuse to express his liberal 
opinions. There was little or nothing cloudy 
or vague about him ; he required that there 
should be known ground even in fiction. He 
rejected the poems of Shelley (many of them 
so consummately beautiful), because they were 
too exclusively ideal. Their efflorescence, he 



STYLE. 29 

thought, was not natural. He preferred 
Southey's "Don Roderick" to his "Curse of 
Kehama ; " of which latter poem he says, " I 
don't feel that 'firm footing in it that I do in 
' Roderick.' My imagination goes sinking 
and floundering in the vast spaces of unopened 
systems and faiths. I am put out of the pale 
of my old sympathies." 

Charles Lamb had much respect for some 
of the modern authors. In particular, he ad- 
mired (to the full extent of his capacity for 
liking) Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Burns. 
But with these exceptions his aflections rested 
mainly on writers who had lived before him ; 
on so7ne of them ; for there were " things in 
books' clothing " from ^vhich he turned away 
loathing. He was not a worshipper of the 
customs and manners of old times, so much 
as of the tangible objects that old times have 
bequeathed to us ; the volumes tinged with de- 
cay, the buildings (the Temple, Christ's Hos- 
pital, &c.) colored and enriched by the hand 
of age. Apart from these, he clung to the 

B 



30 STYLE. 

time present ; for if he hated anything in tlie 
extreme degree, he hated change. 

He cking to life, although life had bestowed 
upon him no magnificent gifts ; none, indeed, 
beyond books, and friends (a " ragged regi- 
ment"), and an affectionate, contented mind. 
He had, he confesses, " an intolerable disincli- 
nation to dying ; " which beset him especially 
in the winter months. " I am not content to 
pass away like a weaver's shuttle. Any al- 
teration in this earth of mine discomposes 
me. My household gods plant a terrible fixed 
foot, and are not rooted up without blood." 
He seems never to have looked into the Fu- 
ture. His eyes were on the present or 
(oftener) on the past. It was always thus 
from his boyhood. His first readings were 
principally Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, 
Isaac Walton, &c. "I gather myself up " (he 
writes) "unto the old things." He has in- 
deed extracted the beauty and innermost value 
of Antiquity, whenever he "has pressed it into 
his service. 



( 31 ) 



CHAPTER II. 

Sirth and Parentage. — Chrisfs Hospital. — 
South Sea Hotise and India House. — Con- 
dition of Fainily. — Death of Mother. — 
Mary in Asylimi. — John Lamb. — Charleses 
Means of Living. — His Home. — Despond- 
ency. — Alice W. — Brother and Sister. 

^N the south side of Fleet Street, near to 
where it adjoins Temj^le Bar, lies the In- 
ner Temple. It extends southward to th© 
Thames, and contains long ranges of melancholy 
buildings, in which lawyers (those reputed birds 
of prey) and their followers congregate. It is 
a district very memorable. About seven hun- 
dred years ago, it was the abiding-place of the 
Knights Templars, who erected there a church, 
which still uplifts its round tower (its sole relic) 
for the wonder of modern times. Fifty years 
since, I remember, you entered the precinct 



32 BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 

through a lowering archway that opened into a 
gloomy passage — Inner Temple Lane. On the 
east side rose the church ; and on the west was 
a dark line of chambers, since pulled down and 
rebuilt, and now called Johnson's Buildings. 
At some distance westward was an open court, 
in which was a sun-dial, and, in the midst, a 
solitary fountain, that sent its silvery voice into 
the air above, the murmur of which, descend- 
ing, seemed to render the place more lonely. 
Midway, between the Inner Temple Lane and 
the Thames, was, and I believe still is, a range 
qf substantial chambers (overlooking the gar- 
dens amd the busy river), called Crown Office 
Row. In one of these chambers, on the i8th 
day of February, 1775, Charles Lamb was 
born. 

He was the son of John and Elizabeth Lamb ; 
and he and his brother John and his sister Maty 
(both of whom were considerably older than 
himself) were the only children of their parents. 
John was twelve years, and Mar}' (properly 



BIRTH AND PABENTAGE. 33 

Mary Anne) was ten years older than Charles. 
Their father held the post of clerk to Mr. 
Samuel Salt, a barrister, one of the benchers 
of the Inner Temple ; a mild, amiable man, 
very indolent, very shy, and, as I imagine, 
not much known in what is called " the pro- 
fession." 

Lamb sprang, paternally, from a humble 
stock, which had its root in the county of Lin- 
coln. At one time of his life his father appears 
to have dwelt at Stamford. Li his imaginary 
ascent from plain Charles Lamb to Pope Inno- 
cent, one of the gradations is Lord Stamford. 
His mother's family came from Hertfordshire, 
where his grandmother was a housekeeper in 
the Plumer family, and where several of his 
cousins long resided. He did not attempt to 
trace his ancestry (of which he wisely made no 
secret) beyond two or three generations. In an 
agreeable sonnet, entitled " The Family Name," 
he speaks of his sire's sire, but no further : 
" We trace our stream no higher." Then he 
3 



34 CFIBIST'S I108FITAL. 

runs into some pleasant conjectures as to his 
possible pi^ogenitors, of whom he knew nothing. 

"Perhaps some shepherd on Lincohiiau plains, "► 

he says, first received the name ; perhaps some 
martial lord, returned from " holy Salem ;" and 
then he concludes with a resolve, — 

«' No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle Name," 

which he kept religiously throughout his life. 

When Charles was between seven and eight 
years of age, he became a scholar in Christ's 
Hospital, a presentation having, been given to 
his father, for the son's benefit. He entered 
that celebrated .school ©n the 9th of October, 
17S2, and remained there until the 23d No- 
vember, 1789, being then between fourteen 
and fifteen years old. The records of his 
boyhood are very scanty. He was always a 
grave, inquisitive boy. Once, when walking 
with his sister through some churchyard, he 
inquired anxiously, "Where do the naughty 
people lie?" the unqualified panegyrics which 



CHRIST S HOSPITAL. 35 

he encountered on the tombstones doubtless 
suggesting the inquiry. Mr. Samuel Le Grice 
(his, schoolfellow) states that he was an amiable, 
gentle youth, very sensible, and keenly observ- 
ing ; that " his complexion was clear brown, 
his countenance mild, his eyes differing in color, 
and that he had a slow and peculiar walk." 
He adds that he was never mentioned without 
the addition of his Christian name, Charles, 
implying a general feeling of kindness towards 
him. His delicate frame and difficulty of ut- 
terance, it is said, unfitted him for joining in 
any boisterous sports. 

After he left Christ's Hospital, he returned 
home, where he had access to the large mis- 
cellaneous libraiy of Mr. Salt. He and his 
sister were (to use his own words) " tumbled 
into a spacious closet of good old English 
reading, and browsed at will on that fair and 
wholesome pasturage." This, however, could 
not have lasted long, for it was the destiny of 
Charles Lamb to be compelled to labor ahnost 



36 CHBIST'S HOSPITAL. 

from his boyhood. He wa~s able to read Greek, 
and had acquired great facihty in Latin com- 
position, when he left the Hospital ; but an 
unconquerable impediment in his speech de- 
prived him of an "exhibition" in the school, 
and, as a consequence, of the benefit of a col- 
lege education. 

The state of Christ's Hospital, at the time 
when Lamb was a scholar there, may be ascer- 
tained witli tolerable correctness from his two 
essays, entitled " Recollections of Christ's Hos- 
pital," and " Christ's Hospital five and thirty 
years ago." These papers when read together 
show the different (favorable and unfavorable) 
points of this great establishment. They leave 
no doubt as to its extensive utility. Although, 
strictly speaking, it was a charitable home for 
the sustenance and education of boys, slenderly 
provided, or unprovided, with the means of 
learning, they were neither lifted up beyond 
their own family nor depressed by mean habits, 
such as an ordinary charity school is supposed to 



CHBIST'8 HOSPITAL. 37 

generate. They floated onwards towards man- 
hood in a wholesome middle region, between a 
too rare ether and the dense and abject atmos- 
phere of pauperism. The Hospital boy (as 
Lamb says) never felt himself to be a charity 
boy. The antiquity and regality of the founda- 
tion to which he belonged, and the inode or 
style of his education, sublimated him beyond 
the heights of the laboring classes. 

From the " Christ's Hospital five and thirty 
years ago," it would appear that the comforts 
enjoyed by Lamb himself exceeded those of his 
schoolfellows, owing to his friends supplying 
him with extra delicacies. There is no doubt 
that great tyranny was then exercised by the 
older boys (the monitors) over the younger 
"ones ; that the scholars had an3^thing but choice 
and ample rations ; and that hunger (" the eld- 
est, strongest of the passions ") was not a tyrant 
unknown throusrhout this larsre institution. 

Lamb remained at Christ's Hospital for 
seven years ; but on the half-holidays (two in 



38 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 

every week) he used to go to his parents' 
home, in the Temple, and when there would 
muse on the terrace, or by the lonely fountain, 
or contemplate the dial, or pore over the books 
in Mr. Salt's library, until those antiquely- 
colored thoughts rose up in his mind which 
in after years he presented to the world. 

Amongst the advantages which Charles de- 
rived from his stay at Christ's Hospital, was 
one which, although accidental, was destined 
to have great effect on his subsequent life. It 
happened that he reckoned amongst his school- 
fellows one who afterwards achieved a very 
extensive reputation, namely, Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge. This youth was his- elder by two 
years ; and his example influenced Lamb ma- 
terially on many occasions, and ultimately led 
him into literature. Coleridge's projects, at 
the outset of life, were vacillating. In this 
respect Lamb was no follower of his school- 
fellow, his own career being steady and lui- 
swervinsf from his entrance into the India 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 39 

House until the day of his freedom from ser- 
vice — between thirty and forty years. His 
literary tastes, indeed, took independently al- 
most the same tone as those of his friend ; 
and their religious views (for Coleridge in his 
early years became a Unitarian) were the same. 
When Coleridge left Christ's Hospital he 
went to the University — to Jesus College, 
Cambridge ; but came back occasionally to 
London, where the intimacy between him and 
Lamb was cemented. Their meetings at the 
smoky little public house in the neighborhood of 
Smithfield, — the "Salutation and Cat," — con- 
secrated by pipes and tobacco (Orinoco), by 
egg-hot and Welsh rabbits, and metaphysics 
and poetry, are exultingly referred to in 
Lamb's letters. Lamb entertained for Cole- 
ridge's genius the greatest respect, until death 
dissolved their friendship. In his earliest 
verses (so dear to a young poet) he used to 
submit his thoughts to Coleridge's amendments 
or critical suggestions ; and on one occasion 



40 SOUTH SEA HOUSE. 

was obliged to cry out, " Spare my ewe lambs : 
they are the reflected images of my own 
feelings." 

It was at a very tender age that Charles 
Lamb entered the "work-a-day" world. His 
elder brother, John, had at that time a clerk- 
ship in the South Sea House, and Charles 
passed a short time there under his brother's 
care or control, and must thus have gained 
some knowledge of figures. The precise 
nature of his occupation in this deserted 
place, however (where some forms of busi- 
ness were kept up, " though the soul be long 
since fled," and where the directors met 
mainly "to declare a dead dividend"), is not 
stated in the charming paper of " The South 
Sea House." Charles remained in this ofiice 
only until the 5th April, 1792, when he ob- 
tained an appointment (through the influence, 
I believe, of Mr. Salt) as clerk in the Ac- 
countant's Office of the East India Company. 
He was then seventeen years of age. 



CONDITION OF THE FAMILY. 41 

About three years after Charles became a 
clerk in the India House, his family appear 
to have moved from Crov\^n Office Row into 
poor lodgings at No. 7 Little Qiieen Street, 
Holborn. His father at that time had a small 
pension from Mr. Salt, whose service he had 
left, being almost fatuous ; his mother was ill 
and bedridden ; and his sister Mary was tired 
ovTt, by needle-work all day, and by taking care 
of her mother throughout the night.. "Of all 
the people in the world" (Charles says), "she 
was most thorovxghly devoid of all selfishness." 
There was also, as a member of the family, 
an old aunt, who had a trifling .annuity for 
her life, which she poured into the common 
fund. John Lamb (Charles's elder brother) 
lived elsewhere, having occasional intercourse 
only with his kindred. He continued, how- 
ever, to visit them, whilst he preserved his 
" comfortable " clerkship in the South Sea 
House. 

It was under this state of things that they 



42 DEATH OF MOTHEB. 

all drifted down to the terrible year 1796. It 
was a year dark with horror. There was an 
hereditary taint of insanity in the family, which 
caused even Charles himself to be placed, for 
a short time, in Hoxton Lunatic Asylum. 
" The six weeks that finished last year and 
began this (1796), your very humble servant 
spent very agreeably in a madhouse, at Hox- 
ton." These are his words when writing to 
Coleridge. 

Mary Lamb had previously been repeatedly 
attacked by the same dreadful disorder ; and 
this now broke out afresh in a sudden burst 
of acute madness. She had been moody and ill 
for some little time previously, and the illness 
came to a crisis on the 23d of September, 
1796. On that day, just before dinner, Mary 
seized a " case-knife " which was lying on 
the table, pursued a little girl (her appren- 
tice) round the room, hurled about the din- 
ner forks, and finally, in a fit of uncontrolla- 
ble frenzy, stabbed her mother to the heart. 



FRIENDS OF THE FAMILY. 43 

Charles was at hand only in time to snatch 
the knife out of her grasp, before further hurt 
could be done. He found his father wounded 
in the forehead by one of the forks, and his 
aunt lying insensible, and apparently dying, on 
the floor of the room. 

This happened on a Thursday ; and on 
the following day an inquest was held on the 
mother's body, and a verdict of Mary's luna- 
cy was immediately found by the jury. The 
Lambs had a few friends. Mr. Norris — the 
friend of Charles's father and of his own 
childhood — " was very kind to us ; " and Sam. 
Le Grice " then in town " (Charles writes) 
" was as a brother to me, and gave up every 
hour of his time in constant attendance on 
my father." 

After the fatal deed, Mary Lamb was deeply 
afflicted. Her act was in the first instance 
totally unknown to her. Afterwarcjs, when 
her consciousness returned and she was in- 
formed of it, she suflered great grief. And 



44 SISTER IN AN ASYLUM. 

subsequently, when she became " calm and 
serene," and saw the misfortune in a clearer 
light, this was " far, very far from an indecent 
or forgetful serenity," as her brother says. 
She had no defiant air, no affectation, nor too 
extravagant a displa}/- of sorrow. She saw her 
act, as she saw all other things, by the light 
of her own clear and gentle good sense. She 
was sad ; but the deed was past recall, and 
at the time of its commission had been ut- 
terly beyond either her control or knowledge. 
After the inquest, Mary Lamb was placed 
in a lunatic asylum, where, after a short 
time, she recovered her serenity. A rapid 
recovery after violent madness is not an unu- 
sual mark of the disease ; it being in cases 
of quiet, inveterate insanity, that the return 
to sound mind (if it ever recur) is more 
gradual and slow. The recovery, however, 
was only temporary in her case. She was 
throughout her life subject to frequent recur- 
rences of the same disease. At one time 



LEFT ALONE. 45 

her brother Charles writes, " Poor Mary's 
disorder so frequently recurring has made us 
a sort of marked people." At another time 
he says, " I consider her as perpetually on 
the brink of madness." And so, indeed, she 
continued during the remainder of her life; 
and she lived to the age of eighty-two 
years. 

Charles was now left alone in the world. 
His father was imbecile ; his sister insane ; and 
his brother afforded no substantial assistance 
or comfort. He was scarcely out of boyhood 
when he learned that the world has its dan- 
gerous places and barren deserts; and that he 
had to struggle for his living, without "help. 
He found that he had to take upon himself 
all the cares of a parent or protector (to his 
sister) even before he had studied the duties 
of a man. 

Sudden as death came down the necessary 
knowledge : how to live, and how to live well. 
The terrible event that had fallen upon him 



46 MEANS OF LIVING. 

and his, instead of casting him down, and 
paralyzing his powers, braced and strung his 
sinews into preternatural firmness. It is the 
character of a feeble mind to lie prostrate be- 
fore the first adversary. In his case it lifted 
him out of that momentary despair which, 
always follows a great calamity. It was like 
extreme cold to the system, which often over- 
throws the weak and timid, but gives additional 
strength and power of endurance to the brave 
and the strong. 

"My aunt was lying apparently dying" 
(writes Lamb), "my father with a wound on 
his poor forehead, and my mother a murdered 
corpse, in the next room. I felt that I had 
something else to do than to regret. I had 
the whole weight of the family zifon me; 
for my brother — little disposed at any time 
to take care of old age and infirmity — has 
now, with his bad leg, exemption from such 
duties ; and I am now left alone." 

In about a month after his mother's death 



BROTHER AND SISTER. ' 47 

(3d October), Charles writes, "My poor, dear, 
deai'est sister, the unhappy and unconscious 
instrument of the Ahiiighty's judgment on our 
house, is restored to her senses ; to a dread- 
ful sense of what has passed ; awful to her 
mind, but tempered with a religious resigna- 
tion. She knows how to distinguish between 
a deed committed in a fit of frenzy and the 
terrible guilt of a mother's murder." In 
another place he says, " She bears her situa- 
tion as one who has no right to complain." 
He himself visits her and upholds her, and 
rejoices in her continued reason. For her use 
he borrows books (" for reading was her 
daily bread"), and gives up his time and all 
his thoughts to her comfort. 

Thus, in their quiet grief, makiftg no show, 
yet suffering more than could be shown by 
clamorous sobs or frantic words, the two — 
brother and sister — enter upon the bleak 
world together. " Her love," as Mr. Words- 
worth states in the epitaph on Charles' Lamb, 



48 JOHN LAMB. 

" was as the love of mothers " towards her 
brother. It may be said that his love for her 
was the deep life-long love of the tenderest 
son. In one letter he writes, " It was not a 
family where I could take Mary with me ; and 
I am afraid that there is something of dis- 
honesty in any pleasures I take without her." 
Many years afterwards (in 1834, ^^^^ very 
year in which he died) he writes to Miss 
Fryer, "It is no new thing for me to be left 
with my sister. When she is not violent, her 
rambling chat is better to me than the sense 
aizd sanity of the ivorldT Surely there is 
great depth of pathos in these unaffected 
words ; in the love that has outlasted all the 
troubles of life, and is thus tenderly expressed, 
almost at his last hour. 

John Lamb, the elder brother of Charles, 
held a clerkship, with some considerable sal- 
ary, in the South Sea House. I do not retain 
an agreeable impression of him. If not rude, 
he was sometimes, indeed generally, abrupt 



JOEN LAMB. 49 

and unprepossessing in manner. He was as- 
suredly deficient in that courtesy which usually 
springs from a mind at friendship with the 
v»^orld. Nevertheless, without much reasoning 
power (apparently), he had much cleverness 
of character ; except when he had to pur- 
chase paintings, at which times his judgment 
Was often at fault. One of his sayings is men- 
tioned in the (Elia) essay of " My Relations." 
He seems to have been, on one occasion, con- 
templating a group of Eton boys at play, when 
he observed, " What a pity it is to think that 
these fine ingenuous lads will some day be 
changed into frivolous members of Parliament?" 
Like some persons who, although case-hardened 
at home, overflow with sympathy towards dis- 
tant objects, he cared less for the feelings of 
his neighbor close at hand than for the eel out 
of water or the oyster disturbed in its shell. 

John Lamb was the favorite of his mother, 
as the deformed child is frequently the dearest. 
" She would always love my brother above 
4 



50 MEANS OF LIVING. 

Mary," Charles writes in 1796, " although he 
was not worth one tenth of the affection which 
Mary had a right to claim. Poor Mary ! my 
mother never understood her right." In 
another place (after he had been unburdening 
his heart to Coleridge), he writes cautiously, 
" Since this has happened," — the death of his 
mother, — "he- has been very kind and broth- 
erly ; but I fear for his mind. He has taken 
his ease in the world, and is not fit to strug- 
gle with difficulties. Thank God, I can un- 
connect myself with him, and shall manage 
my father's moneys myself, if I take charge 
of Daddy, which poor John has not hinted a 
wish at any future time to share with me." 
Mary herself, when she was recovering, said 
that " she knew she must go to Bethlehem 
for life ; that one of her brothers would have 
it so ; the other would not wish it, but would 
be obliged to go with the stream." 

At this time, reckoning up their several 
means of living, Charles Lamb and his father 



BBOTEEB AND SISTER. 51 

had together an income of one hundred and 
seventy or one hundred and eighty pounds ; 
out of which, he says, " we can spare fifty or 
sixty pounds at least for Mary whilst she stays 
in an asylum. If I and my father and an old 
maid-servant can't live, and live comfortably, 
on t one hundred and thirty or one hundred 
and twenty pounds a year, we ought to burn 
by slow fires. I almost would, so that Mary 
might not go into a hospital." She was 
then recovering her health ; had become se- 
rene and cheerful ; and Charles was passion- 
ately desirous that, after a short residence in" 
the lunatic establishment wherein she then 
was, she should return home : " But the sur- 
viving members of her family " (these are Sir 
Thomas Talfourd's words), "especially John, 
who enjoyed a fair income from the South 
Sea House, opposed ber discharge." Charles, 
however, ultimately succeeded in his pious 
desire, upon entering into a solemn under- 
taking; to take care of his sister thereafter. 



52 UNGOMFORTABLE EOME. 

He provided a lodging for her at Hackney, 
and spent all his Sundays and holidays with 
her. I never heard of John Lamb having 
contributed anything, in money or otherwise, 
towards the support of his deranged sister, 
or to assist his young struggling brother. 

Soon after this time Charles took his sister 
Maiy to live with himself entirely. Whenever 
the approach of one of her fits of insanity was 
announced by some irritability or change of 
manner, he would take her, under his arm, to 
Hoxton Asylum. It was very afflicting to en- 
counter the young brother and his sister walk- 
ing together (weeping together) on this painful 
errand ; Mary herself, although sad, very con- 
scious of the necessity for temporary separation 
from her only friend. They used to carry a 
strait jacket with them. 

In the latter days of his father's life, Charles 
must have had an uncomfortable home. " I 
go home at night overwearied, quite faint, and 
then to cards with my father, who will not let 



UNGOMFOBTABLE HOME. 53 

me enjoy a meal in peace. After repeated 
games at cribbage" (he is writing to Colei-idge), 
" I have got my father's leave to write ; with 
diiSculty got it : for when I expostulated about 
playing any more, he replied, 'If you won't 
play with me, you might as well not come 
home at all.' The argument was unanswer- 
able, and I set to afresh." 

Soon after this, the father, who at last had 
become entirely imbecile, died ; and the pension 
which he had received from Mr. Salt, the old 
bencher, ceased. The aunt, who had been 
taken for a short time to the house of a rich 
relation, but had been sent back, also died in 
the following month. "My poor old aunt" 
(Charles writes), "who was the kindest crea- 
tui-e to me when I was at school, and used to 
bring me good things ; when I, schoolboy-like, 
used to be ashamed to see her come, and open her 
apron, and bring out her basin with some nice 
thing which she had saved for me ; the good 
old creature is now lying on her death-bed. 



54 LIMITED BE80URGES. 

She says, poor thing, she is glad she has come 
home to die with me. I was always her favor- 
ite." Thus Charles was left to his own poor 
resources (scarcely, if at all, exceeding one 
hundred pounds a year) ; and these remained 
very small for some considerable time. His 
writings were not calculated to attract imme- 
diate popularity, and the increase of his salary 
at the India House was slow. Even in 1S09 
(November), almost fifteen years later, the ad- 
dition of twenty pounds a year, which comes 
to him on the resignation of a clerk in the 
India House, is very important, and is the sub- 
ject of a joyful remark by his sister Mary. 

The impression made, in the first instance, 
on Charles Lamb, by the terrible death of his 
mother, cannot be explained in any condensed 
manner. His mind, short of insanity, seems to 
have been utterly upset. He had been fond 
of poetry to excess ; almost all his leisure hours 
seemed to have been devoted to the books of 
poets and religious writers, to the composition 



DESPONDENCY. 55 

of poetry, and to criticising various writers in 
verse. But afterwards, in his distress, he re- 
quests Coleridge to " mention notliing of poetry. 
I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities 
of that kind. Never send me a book, I charge 
you. I am wedded" (he adds) " to the fortunes 
of my sister and my poor old father." At another 
time he writes, " On the dreadful day I preserved 
a tranquillity, not of despair." Some persons 
coming into the " house of misery," and per- 
suading him to take some food, he says, " In an 
agony of emotion, I found my way mechanically 
into the adjoining room, and fell on my knees 
by the side of her coffin, asking forgiveness of 
Heaven, and sometimes of her, for forgetting 
her so soon." 

A few days later, he says to his friend, " You 
are the only correspondent, and, I might add, 
the only friend I have in the world. I go no- 
where and see no acquaintance." At this time 
he gave away all Coleridge's letters, burned 
all his own poetry, all the numerous poetical 



56 ■ ALICE W. 

extracts he had made, and the little journal 
of " My foolish passion, which I had a long 
time kept." Subsequently, when he becomes 
better, he writes again to his friend, " Corre- 
spondence with you has iHDUsed me a little from 
my lethargy, and made me conscious of my 
existence." 

Charles was now entirely alone with his sis- 
ter. She was the only object between him and 
God, and out of this misery and desolation sprang 
that wonderful love between brother and sister, 
which has no parallel in history. Neither would 
allow any stranger to partake of the close affec- 
tion that seemed to be solely the other's right. 
Doubts have existed whether Charles Lamb 
ever gave up for the sake of Mary the one real 
attachment of his youth. It has been considered 
somewhat probable that Alice W. was an im- 
aginary being — some Celia, or Campaspe, or 
Lindamira ; that she was in effect one of those 
visions which float over us when we escape 
from childhood. But it may have been a real 



ALICE W. 57 

love, driven deeper into the heart, and torn out 
for another love, more holy and as pure : for 
he was capable of a grand sacrifice. No one 
will, perhaps, ever ascertain the truth precisely. 
It must remain undiscovered — magnified by 
the mist of uncertainty — like those Hesperian 
Gardens which inspired the verses of poets, but 
are still surrounded by fable. 

For my own part, I am persuaded that the 
attachment was real. He says that his sister 
would often " lend an ear to his desponding, 
love-sick lay." After he himself had been in 
a lunatic asylum, he writes to Coleridge, that 
his " head ran upon him, in his madness, as 
much almost as on another person, w/io was 
the more hnmediate cause of my frenzy^ 
Later in the year he burned the " little journal 
of his foolish passion ; " and, when writing to 
his friend on the subject of his love sonnets, 
he says, " It is a passion of which I retain 
nothing." It is clear, I think, that it was love 
for a real person, however transient it may have 



58 BROTHER AND SISTER. 

been. But the fact, whether true or false, is 
inexpressibly unimportant. It could not add 
to his stature : it could not diminish it. His 
whole life is acted ; and in it are numerous 
other things which substantially raise and 
honor him. The ashes (if ashes there were) 
are cold. His struggles and pains, and hopes 
and visions, are over. All lie, diffused, inter- 
mingled in that vast Space which has No 
Name ; like the winds and light of yestei'day, 
which came and gave pleasure for a moment, 
and now have changed and left us, forever. 

In contrast with this apocryphal attachment 
stands out his deep and unalterable love for 
his sister Mary. " God love her," he says ; 
" may we two never love • each other less." 
They never did. Their affection continued 
throughout life, without interruption ; without 
a cloud, except such as rose from the fluctua- 
tions of her health. It is said that a woman 
rises or falls with the arm on which she leans. 
In this case, Mary Lamb at all times had a 



BBOTHEB AND SISTER. 59 

safe support; an arm that never shook nor 
wavered, but kept its elevation, faitliful and 
firm tlirougliout life. 

It is difficult to explain fully the great love 
of Charles for his sister, except in his own 
words. Whenever her name occurs in the 
correspondence, the tone is always the same ; 
always tender ; without abatement, without 
change. "I am a fool" (he writes) "bereft 
of her cooperation. I am used to look up to 
her in the least and biggest perplexities. To 
say all that I find her, would be more than I 
think anybody could possibly understand. She 
is older, wiser, and better than I am ; and all 
my wretched imperfections I cover to m3^self, 
by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She 
would share life and death with me." This 
(to anticipate) was written in 1805, when she 
was suflering from one of her attacks of illness. 
After she became better, he became better also, 
and opened his heart to the pleasures and ob- 
jects around him. It was open at all times to 



6o BBOTEEB AND 8I8TEB. 

want, and sickness, and wretchedness, and gen- 
erally to the friendly voices and homely reali- 
ties that rose up and surrounded him in his 
daily walk through life. 

During all his years he was encircled by 
groups of loving friends. There were no others 
habitually round him. It is reported of some 
person that he had not merit enough to create 
a foe. In Lamb's case, I suppose, he did not 
possess that peculiar merit; for he lived and 
died without an enemy. 



(6i ) 



CHAPTER III. 

yem White. — Coleridge. — LarnVs Inspira- 
tion. — Early Letters. — Poem published. — 
Charles Lloyd. — Liking for Burns^ So. — 
^lakerism. — Robert Southey. — Southey 
and Coleridge. — Antijacobiiz. — Rosaitiond 
Gray. — George Dyer. — Matzning. — Mar^s 
Illnesses. — Migrations. — Hester Savory. 

AFTER the pain arising from the deaths 
of his parents had somewhat subsided, 
and his sorrow, exhausting itself in the usual 
manner, had given way to calm, the story 
of Lamb becomes mainly an account of his 
uitercourse with society. He was surrounded, 
during his somewhat monotonous career, by 
affectionate and admiring friends, who helped 
to bring out his rare qualities, who stimu- 
lated his genius, and who are in fact inter- 
woven with his own history. 



62 JEM WHITE. 

One of the earliest of these was his school- 
fellow James (familiarly Jem) White. This 
•youth, who at the beginning of this period 
was his most frequent companion, had great 
cleverness and abundant animal spirits, under 
the influence of which he had produced a 
small volume, entitled " Original Letters of 
Sir John Falstaff" , and his Friends." These 
letters were ingenious imitations of the style 
and tone of thought of the celebrated Shake- 
spearian knight and his familiars. Beyond 
this merit they are, perhaps, not sufficiently 
full of that enduring matter which is intended 
for posterity. Nevertheless they contain some 
good and a few excellent things. The letter 
of Davy (Justice Shallow's servant) giving an 
account to his master of the death of poor 
Abram Slender is very touching. Slender dies 
from mere love of sWeet Ann Page ; " Master 
Abram is dead ; gone, your worship. A' sang 
his soul and body quite away. A' turned like 
the latter end of a lover's lute." 



JEM WHITE. 63 

Wliite's book was published in 1 796 ; and 
one of the early copies was sold at the Rox- 
burgh sale for five guineas. Is it possible • 
that the imitations could have been mistaken 
for originals? Afterwards, the little book 
could be picked up for eighteenpence ; even 
for sixpence. It was always a great fa- 
vorite with Lamb. He reviewed it, after 
White's death, in the JBxa^niner. Lamb's 
friendship and sympathy in taste with White 
induced him to attach greater value to this 
book than it was, perhaps, strictly entitled to ; 
he even passes some commendation on the 
frontispiece, which is undoubtedly a very poor 
specimen of art. It is remarkable how Lamb, 
who was able to enter so completely into 
Hogarth's sterling humor, could ever have 
placed any value upon this counterfeit coin. 

But Lamb had a great regard for Jem 
White. They had been boys together, school- 
fellows in Christ's Hospital ; and these very 
early friendships seldom undergo any severe 



64 JEM WHITE. 

critical tests. At all events, Lamb thought 
highly of White's book, which he used often 
to purchase and give away to his friends, in 
justification of his own taste and to extend 
the fame of the author. The copy which he 
gave me I have still. White, it seems, after 
leaving Christ's Hospital as a scholar, took 
some office there ; but eventually left it, and 
became an agent for newspapers. 

In one of the Elia essays, "The Praise 
of Chimney-sweepers," Lamb has set forth 
some of the merits of his old friend. Un- 
doubtedly Jem White must have been a 
thoroughly kind-hearted man, since he could 
give a dinner every year, on St. Bartholo- 
mew's day, to the little chimney-sweepers of 
London ; waiting on them, and cheering them 
up with his jokes and lively talk ; creating at 
least one happy day annually in each of their 
poor lives. ■ At the date of the essay (May, 
1823) he had died. In Lamb's words, "James 
White is extinct ; and with him the suppers 



COLE BID QE. ^ 65 

have long ceased. He carried away with 
him half the fun of the world when he died 
— of my world, at least. His old clients 
look for him among the pens ; and, missing 
him, reproach the altered feast of St. Bar- 
tholomew, and the glory of Smithfield de- 
parted forever." 

The great friend and Mentor, however, of 
Charles Lamb's youth, wns (as has frequently 
been asserted) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who 
was a philosopher, and who was considered, 
almost universally, to be the greater genius 
of the two. It may be so ; and there is 
little doubt that in mere capacity, in the 
power of accumulating and disbursing ideas, 
and in the extent and variety of his knowl- 
edge, he exceeded Lamb, and also most of 
his other contemporaries ; but the mind of 
Lamb was quite as original, and more com- 
pact. The two friends were very dissimilar, 
the one wandering amongst lofty, ill-defined 
objects, whilst the other " clung to the reali- 
5 



66 COLERIDGE. 

ties of life." It is fortunately not necessary 
to enter into any comparative estimate of these 
two remarkable persons. Each had his posi- 
tive qualities and jDeculiarities, by which he 
was distinguishable from other men ; and by 
these he may therefore be separately and more 
safely judged. 

In his mature age (when I knew him) 
Coleridge had a full, round face, a fine, broad 
forehead, rather thick lips, and strange, dreamy 
eyes, which were often lighted up by eager- 
ness, but wanted concentration, and were 
adapted apparently for musing or speculation, 
rather than for precise or rapid judgment. 
Yet he was very slirewd, as well as eloquent; 
was (slightly) addicted to jesting ; and would 
talk "at sight" upon any subject with ex- 
treme fluency and much knowledge. " His 
white hair," in Lamb's words, " slu'ouded a 
capacious brain." 

Coleridge had browsed and expatiated over 
all the rich regions of literature, at home and 



COLERIDGE. 6^ 

abroad. In youth his studies had, in the 
first instance, been mainly in theology, he 
having selected the " Church " for his profes- 
sion. Although he was educated in the creed 
and rites of the Church of England, he be- 
came for a time a Unitarian preacher, and 
scattered his eloquent words over many human 
audiences. He was fond of questions of logic, 
and of explaining his systems and opinions by 
means of diagrams ; but his projects were sel- 
dom consummated ; and his talk (sometimes) 
and his prose writing (often) were tedious and 
diffuse. His " Christabel," from which he 
derived much of his fame, remained, after a 
lapse of more than thirty years, incomplete at 
his death. He gained much reputation from 
the "Ancient Mariner" (which is perhaps his 
best poem) ; but his translation of Schiller's 
" Wallenstein " is the only achievement that 
shows him capable of a great prolonged 
effort. Lamb used to boast that he supplied 
one line to his friend in the fourth scene of 



68 COLERIDGE. 

that tragedy, where the description of the 
Pagan deities occurs. In speaking of Satan, 
he is figured as "an old man melancholy." 
" That was my line," Lamb would say, exult- 
ingly. I forget how it was orignally written, 
except that it had not the extra (or eleventh) 
syllable, which it now possesses. 

There is some beautiful writing in this fourth 
scene, which may be read after Mr. Words- 
worth's equally beautiful reference to the 
Olympian gods and goddesses, in the fourth 
book of the " Excursion," entitled " Despon- 
dency Corrected." The last explains more 
completely than the other the attributes of the 
deities specially named. 

The most elaborate (perhaps impartial) 
sketches of Coleridge — his great talents, com- 
bined with his great weaknesses — may be 
found in Hazlitt's Essays, " The Spirit of the 
Age " and " My First Acquaintance with Po- 
ets ; " and in the eighth chapter of Mr. Car- 
lyle's "Life of John Sterling." 



COLEBIDOE. 69 

In Lamb's letters it is easy to perceive 
that the winter soon became aware of the 
foibles of his friend. " Cultivate simplicity, 
Coleridge," is his admonition as early as 1796. 
In another place his remark is, " You have 
been straining your faculties to bring together 
things infinitely distant and unlike." Again, 
" I grieve from my very soul to observe you 
in your plans of life veering about from this 
hope to the other, and settling nowhere." 
Robert Southey, whose prose style was the 
perfection of neatness, and who was intimate 
with Coleridge throughout his life, laments that 
it is " extraordinary that he should write in 
so rambling and inconclusive a manner ; " his 
mind, which was undoubtedly very pliable 
and subtle, " turning and winding, till you 
get weary of following his mazy movements." 

Charles Lamb, however, always sincerely 
admired and loved his old schoolfellow, and 
grieved deeply when he died. The recollec- 
tion of this event, which' happened many 



7o COLERIDGE. 

years afterwards (in 1834), never left Lamb 
until his own death : he used perpetually to 
exclaim, " Coleridge is dead, Coleridge is 
dead," in a low, musing, meditative voice. 
These exclamations (addressed to no one) 
were, as Lamb was a most unaffected man, 
assuredly involuntary, and showed that he 
could not get rid of the melancholy truth. 

At this distance of time, many persons 
(judging by what he has left behind him) 
wonder at the extent of admiration which 
possessed some of Coleridge's contemporaries : 
Charles Lamb accorded to his genius some- 
thing scarcely short of absolute worship ; 
Robert Southey considered his capacity as ex- 
ceeding that of almost all other writei's ; and 
Leigh Hunt, speaking of Coleridge's pei^sonal 
appearance, says, " He had a mighty intellect 
put upon a sensual body." Persons who were 
intimate with both have suggested that even 
Wordsworth was indebted to him for some of 
his philosophy. As late as 181 8, Lamb, when 



COLERIDGE. 71 

dedicating his works to him, says that Cole- 
ridge " first Ivindled in him, if not tlie power, 
tlie love, of poetry, and beauty, and kindness." 
He must be judged, however, by what he has 
actually done. 

I am not here as the valuer of Coleridge's 
merits. I have no pretensions and no desire 
to assume so delicate an office. His dreams 
and intentions were undoubtedly good, and, 
had he been able to carry them out for the 
benefit of the world, would have entitled him- 
self to the name of a great poet, a gi^eat genius. 
His readiness to discuss all subjects, and his 
ability to talk on most of them with ease, 
were marvellous. But he was always infirm 
of purpose, and never did justice to his own 
capacity. 

Amongst other men of talent who have 
sung Coleridge's praises should be named Haz- 
litt, who knew him in 17985 ^"^^ h'ls enshrined 
him in the first of his charming papers, en- 
titled "Winterslow Essays." Hazlitt admits 



72 COLERIDGE. 

his feebleness of purpose, but speaks of his 
genius, shining upon his own (then) dumb, 
inarticulate nature, as the sun " upon the pud- 
dles of the road." Coleridge at that time 
was a Unitarian minister, and had come to 
preach, instead of the minister for the time 
being, at Shrewsbury. Hazlitt rose before 
daylight (it was in January), and walked from 
Wem to Shrewsbury, a distance of ten miles, 
to hear the "celebrated" man, who combined 
the inspirations of poet and preacher in one 
person, enlighten a Shropshire congregation. 
" Never, the longest day, I have to live " (says 
he), "shall I have such another walk as this 
cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of 
1798. When I got there [to the Chapel], the 
oi'gan was playing the one hundredth Psalm ; 
and when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and 
gave out his text — ' And he went up into 
the mountain to pray. Himself Alone.' 
The preacher then launched into his subject, 
like an eagle dallying with the wind," &c. 



LAMB'S INSPIRATION. 73 

Coleridge was at that time only five and twen- 
ty years of age ; yet he seems even then to 
have been able to decide on many writers in 
logic and rhetoric, philosophy and poetry. Of 
course he was familiar with the works of his 
friend Wordsworth, of whom he cleverly ob- 
served, in reply to the depreciating opinion of 
Mackintosh, " He strides on so far before you, 
that he dwindles in the distance." * 

It would be very interesting, were it practi- 
cable, to trace with certainty the sources that 
supplied Charles Lamb's inspiration. But this 
must always be impossible. For inspiration, 
in all cases, proceeds from many sources, al- 
though there may be one influence predomi- 
'nating. It is clear that a great Tragedy 
mainly determined his conduct through life, 

* The most convincing evidence of Coleridge's powers 
is to be foimd in his Table Talk. It appears from it 
that he was ready to discuss (almost) any subject, and 
that he was capable of talking ably upon most, and clev- 
erly upon all. 



74 LAMB'S INSPIRATION, 

and operated, therefore, materially on his 
thoughts as well as actions. The terrible 
death of his mother concentrated and strength- 
ened his mind, and prevented its dissipation 
into trifling and ignoble thoughts. The regu- 
larity of the India House labor upheld him. 
The extent and character of his acquaintance 
also helped to determine the quality of the 
things which he produced. Had he seen less, 
his mind might have become warped and rigid, 
as from want of space. Had he seen too 
much, his thoughts might have been split and 
exhausted upon too many points, and wx>uld 
thus have been so perplexed and harassed, 
that the value of his productions, now known 
and current through all classes, might scarcely 
have exceeded a negative quantity. 

Then, in his companions he must be ac- 
counted fortunate. Coleridge helped to unloose 
his mind from too precise notions : Southey 
gave it consistency and cori'cctness : Manning 
expanded his vision : Hazlitt gave him dar- 



EARLY LETTERS. *JS 

ing: perhaps even poor George Dyer, like 
some unrecognized virtue, may have kept 
ahve and nourished the pity and tenderness 
which v\^ere originally sown within him. We 
must leave the difficulty, as we must leave the 
great problems of Nature, unexplained, and 
be content with what is self-evident before us. 
We know, at all events, that he had an open 
heart, and that the heart is a fountain which 
never fails. 

The earliest productions of Lamb which 
have come down to us, namely, verses, and 
criticism, and letters, are all in a grave and 
thoughtful tone. The letters, at first, are on 
melancholy subjects, but afterwards stray into 
criticism or into details of his readings, or an 
account of his predilections for books and au- 
thors. At one or two and twenty, he had 
read and formed opinions on Shakespeare, on 
Beaumont and Fletcher, on Massinger, Milton, 
Cowley, Isaac Walton, Burns, Collins, and 
others ; some of these, be it observed, lying 



76 EABLY LETTERS AND POEMS. 

much out of the ordinary course of a young 
man's reading. He was also acquainted with 
the writings of Priestley and Wesley, and 
Jonathan Edwards ; for the first of whom he 
entertained the deepest respect. 

Lamb's verses were always good, steady, and 
firm, and void of those magniloquent com- 
monplaces which so clearly betray the imma- 
ture writer. They were at no time misty nor 
inconsequent, but contained proof that he had 
reasoned out his idea. From the age of 
twenty-one to the age of fift}^-nine, when he 
died, he hated fine words and flourishes of 
rhetoric. His imagination (not very lofty, per- 
haps) is to be discovered less in his verse 
than in his prose humor, than in his letters 
and essays. In these it was never trivial, but 
was always knit together by good sense, or 
softened by tenderness. Real humor seldom 
makes its appearance in the first literary ven- 
tures of 3-oung writers. Accordingly, symp- 
toms of humor (which, nevertheless, were not 



EABLY LETTERS AND POEMS. 77 

long delayed) are not to be discovered in 
Charles Lamb's first letters or poems; the 
latter, when prepared for publication in 1796, 
being especially grave. They are entitled 
" Poems by Charles Lamb of the India 
House," and are inscribed to "Mary Anne 
Lamb, the author's best friend and sister." 

After some procrastination, the book contain- 
ing them was published in 1797? conjointly 
with other verses by Coleridge and Charles 
Lloyd. "We came into our first battle" 
(Charles says in his dedication to Coleridge, 
in 1818) "under cover of the greater Ajax." 
In this volume Lloyd's verses took precedence 
of Lamb's, at Coleridge's suggestion. This 
suggestion, the reason of which is not very 
obvious, was very readily acceded to. Lamb 
having a sincere regard for Lloyd, who (with 
a fine reasoning mind) was subject to that 
sad mental disease which was common to 
both their families. Lamb has addressed some 
verses to Lloyd at this date, which indicate 



78 VISIT TO COLERIDGE. 

the great respect he felt towards his friend's 
intellect : — 

"I'll think less meanly of myself, 

* That Lloyd will sometimes tliink of me." 

This joint volume was published without 
much success. In the same year Lamb and 
his sister paid a visit to Coleridge, then living 
at. Stowey, in Somersetshire ; after which 
Coleridge, for what purpose does not very 
clearly appear, migrated to Germany. This 
happened in the year 1798. 

Charles Lloyd, one of the triumvirate of 
1797? was the son of a banker at Birmingham. 
He was educated as a Quaker, but seceded 
from that body, and afterwards became "per- 
plexed in mind," and very desponding. He 
often took up his residence in London, but 
did not mingle much with society. An ex- 
treme melancholy darkened his latter days ; 
and, as I believe, he died insane. He pub- 
lished various poems, and translated, fi;pm the 
Italian into English blank verse, the tragedies 



CHARLES LLOYD. 79 

of Alfieri. His poems are distinguished rather 
by a remarkable power of intellectual analysis 
than by the delicacy or fervor of the verse. 

The last time I saw Charles Lloyd was in 
company with Hazlitt. We heard that he had 
taken lodgings at a working brazier's shop in 
Fetter Lane, and we visited him there, and 
found him in bed, much depressed, but very 
willing to discuss certain problems with Haz- 
litt, who carried on the greater part of the 
conversation. We understood that he had 
selected these noisy apartments in order that 
they might distract his mind from the fears 
and melancholy thoughts which at that time 
distressed him. 

It was soon after the publication of the joint 
volume that Charles chronicles the different 
tastes of himself and his friend. " Burns," he 
says, " is the god of my idolatry, as Bowles of 
yours." Posterit}^ has universally joined in the 
preference of Lamb. Burns, indeed, was al- 
ways one of his greatest favorites. He admired 



So LIKING FOR BURNS. 

and sometimes quoted a line or two from the 
last stanza of the " Lament for James, Earl of 
Glencairn," "The bridegroom may forget his 
bride," &c. ; and I have more than once heard 
him repeat, in a fond, tender voice, when the 
subject of poets or poetry came under discus- 
sion, the following beautiful lines from the Epis- 
tle to Simpson of Ochiltree : 

"The Muse, nae poet ever fand her, 
Till by himsel he learn'd to wander, 
Adown some trotting burn's meander 
An' no think 't lang." 

These he would press upon the attention of 
any one present (chanting tliem aloud), and 
would bring down the volume of Burns, and 
open it, in order that the page might be im- 
pressed on the hearer's memory. Sometimes — 
in a way scarcely discernible — he would kiss 
the volume ; as he would also a book by Chap- 
man or Sir Philip Sidney, or any other which 
he particularly valued. I have seen him read 
out a passage from the Holy Dying and the Urn 



QUAKERISM. 8i 

Burial, and express in the same way his devo- 
tion and gratitude. 

Lamb had been brought up a Unitarian ; but 
he appears to have been occasionally fluctuating 
in a matter as to v^hich boys are not apt to en- 
tertain very rigid opinions. At one time he 
longed to be with superior thinkers. " I am 
always longing to be with men more excellent 
than myself," are his words. At another time 
he writes, " I have had thoughts of turning 
Quaker lately." A visit, however, to one of 
the Quaker meetings in i797» decides him 
against such conversion : " This cured me of 
Qtiakerism. I love it in the books of Penn and 
Woodman ; but I detest the vanity of man, 
thinking he speaks by the Spirit." A similar 
story is told of Coleridge. Mr. Justice Cole- 
ridge's statement is, " He told us a humorous 
story of his enthusiastic fondness for Qi.Takers 
when at Cambridge, and his attending one of 
their meetings, which had entirely cured him." 

In 1797 Charles Lamb (who had been intro- 
6 



82 VI8IT TO 80UTHET. 

duced to Southey by Coleridge two years pre- 
viously) accompanied Lloyd to a little village 
near Christchurch, in Hampshire, where Southey 
was at that time reading. This little holiday 
(of a fortnight) seems to have converted the 
acquaintanceship between Southey and Lamb 
into something like intimacy. He then paid 
another visit (which he had long meditated) to 
Coleridge, who was residing at Stowey. 

It must have been shortly after this first visit 
(for Lamb went again to Stowey, and met 
Wordsworth there in 1801) that Coleridge un- 
dertook the office of minister to a Unitarian 
congregation at Shrewsbury, and preached there, 
as detailed by Hazlitt in the manner already set 
forth. In 1798 he took his departure for Ger- 
many, and this led to a familiar correspondence 
between Lamb and Southey. The opening of 
Lamb's humor may probably be referred to 
this friendship with a congenial humorist, and 
one, like himself, taking a strong interest in 
worldly matters. Coleridge, between whom 



COLERIDGE AND SOUTHET. 83 

and Lamb there was not much similarity of 
feeling, beyond their common love for poetry 
and religious writings, was absent, and Lamb 
was enticed by the kindred spirit of Southey 
into the accessible regions of humor. These 
two friends never arrived at that close friend- 
ship which had been forming between Coleridge 
and Lamb ever since their school-days at Christ's 
Hospital. But they interchanged ideas on poet- 
ical and humorous topics, and did not perplex 
themselves with anything speculative or tran- 
scendental. 

The first letter to Southey, which has been 
preserved (July, 179S), announces that Lamb 
is ready to enter into any jocose contest. It 
includes a list of queries to be defended by Cole- 
ridge at Leipsic or Gottingen ; the first of which 
was, " Whether God loves a lying angel better 
than a true man ? " Some of these queries, in 
all probability, had relation to Coleridge's own 
infirmities : at all events, they were sent over 
to him in reply to the benediction which he 



84 COLERIDGE. 

had thought proper to bequeath to Charles on 
leaving England. " Poor Lamb, if he wants 
any knowledge he may apply to meT I must 
believe that this message was jocose, otherwise 
it would have been insolent in the extreme 
degree. Coleridge's answers to the queries 
above adverted to are not known ; I believe 
that the proffered knowledge was not afforded 
so readily as it was demanded. 

It has been surmised that there was some 
interruption of the good feeling between Cole- 
ridge and Lamb about this period of their lives ; 
but I cannot discern this in the letters that oc- 
curred between the two schoolfellows. The 
message of Coleridge, and the questions in re- 
ply, occur in 1798 ; and in May, 1800, there is a 
letter from Lamb to Coleridge, and subsequently 
two others, in the same year, all couched in the 
old customary, friendly tone. In addition to 
this, Charles Lamb, many years afterwards, 
said that there had been an uninterrupted 
friendship of fifty years between them. In one 



COLERIDGE AND SOUTEET. S^ 

letter of Lamb's, indeed (17th March, 1800), it 
appears that his early notions of Coleridge be- 
ing a "very good man" had been traversed 
by some doubts ; but these " foolish impres- 
sions " were short-lived, and did not apparently 
form any check to the continuance of their 
life-long friendship. 

It is clear that Lamb's judgment M^as at 
this time becoming independent. In one of 
his letters to Coleridge, vs^hen comparing his 
friend's merits with those of Southey, he says, 
" Southey has no pretensions to vie with you 
in the sublime of poetry, but he tells a plain 
story better." Even to Southey he is equally 
candid. Writing to him on the subject of a 
volume of poems which he had lately pub- 
lished, he remarks, " The Rose is the only 'in- 
sipid poem in the volume ; it has neither thorns 
nor sweetness." 

In 1798 or 1799? Lamb contributed to the 
Annual Anthology (which Mr. Cottle, a book- 
seller of Bristol, published), jointly with Cole- 



86 ANTIJAGOBIN BE VIEW. 

ridge and South ey. In 1800 he was introduced 
by Coleridge to Godwin. It is clear that 
Charles's intimacy with Coleridge, and Southey, 
and Lloyd, was not productive of unmitigated 
pleasure. For the " Antijacobin " made its ap- 
pearance about this time, and denounced them 
all in a manner which in the present day would 
itself be denounced as infamous. Some of these 
gentlemen (Lamb's friends), in common with 
many others, augured at first favorably of the 
actors in the great French Revolution, and this 
had excited much displeasure in the Tory ranks. 
Accordingly they were represented as being 
guilty of blasphemy and slander, and as being 
adorers of a certain French revolutionist, named 
Lepaux, of whom Lamb, at all events, was en- 
tirely ignorant. They were, moreover, the sub- 
ject of a caricature by Gilray, in which Lamb 
and Lloj^d were portrayed as toad and frog. 
I cannot think, with Sir T. Talfourd, that all 
these libels were excusable, on the ground of 
the "sportive wit" of the offending parties. 



ROSAMOND GBAT. 87 

Lamb's writings had no reference whatever to 
poHtical subjects ; they were, on the contrary, 
as the first writings of a young man generally 
are, serious, — even religious. Referring to 
Coleridge, it is stated that he " was dishonored 
at Cambridge for preaching Deism, and that 
he had since left his native country, and left 
his poor children fatherless, and his wife des- 
titute : " ex his disce Ms friends Lamb and 
Southey. A scurrilous libel of this stamp 
would now be rejected by all persons of good 
feeling or good character. It would be spurned 
by a decent publication, or, if published, would 
be consigned to the justice of a jury. 

The little story of Rosamond Gray was 
wrought out of the artist's brain in the year 
1798, stimulated,, as Lamb confesses, by the old 
ballad of "An old woman clothed in gray," 
which he had been reading. It is defective 
as a regular tale; It wants circumstance and 
probability, and is slenderly provided with char- 
acter. There is, moreover, no construction in 



88 GEORGE DYEE. 

the narrative, and little or no progress in the 
events. Yet it is very daintily told. The mind 
of the author v^^ells out in the purest streams. 
Having to deal with one foul incident, the tale 
is nevertheless without speck or blemish. A 
virgin ''nymph, born of a lily, could not have 
unfolded her thoughts more delicately. And, 
in spite of its improbability, Rosamond Gray 
is very pathetic. It touches the sensitive points 
in young hearts ; and it was by no means with- 
out success — the author's first success. It sold 
much better than his poems, and added " a few 
pounds" to his slender income. 

George Dyer, once a pupil in Christ's Hos- 
pital, possessing a good reputation as a clas- 
sical scholar, and who had preceded Lamb in 
the school, about this time came into the circle 
of his familiars. Dyer was one of the sim- 
plest and most inoffensive men in the world : 
in his heart there existed nothing but what 
was altogether pure and unsophisticated. He 
seemed never to have outsfi"own the innocence 



GEORGE DYER. 89 

of childhood ; or rather he appeared to be 
without those germs or first principles of evil 
which sometimes begin to show themselves 
even in childhood itself. He was not only 
without any of the dark passions himself, but 
he would not perceive them in others. He 
looked only on the sunshine. Hazlitt, speak- 
ing of him in his " Conversation of Authors," 
says, " He lives amongst the old authors, if 
he does not enter much into their spirit. He 
handles the covers, and turns over the pages, 
and is familiar with the names and dates. He 
is busy and self-involved. He hangs like a 
film and cobweb upon letters, or is like the 
- dust upon the outside of knowledge, which 
should not too rudely be brushed aside. He 
follows learning as its shadow, but as such he 
is respectable. He browses on the husks and 
leaves of books." And Lamb says, " The 
gods, by denying him the very faculty of 
discrimination, have effectually cut off every 
seed of envy in his bosom." 



90 QEOBGE DYEB. 

Dyer was very thin and short in person, 
and was extremely near-sighted ; and his mo- 
tions were often (apparently) spasmodic. His 
means of living were very scanty ; he sub- 
sisted mainly by supervising the press, being 
employed for that purpose by booksellers when 
they were printing Greek or Latin books. He 
dwelt in Clifford's Inn, " like a dove in an 
asp's nest," as Charles Lamb wittily says ; and 
he might often have been seen with a classical 
volume in his hand, and another in his pocket, 
walking slowly along Fleet Street or its neigh- 
borhood, unconscious of gazers, cogitating over 
some sentence, the correctness of which it was 
his duty to determine. You might meet him 
murmuring to himself in a low voice, and ap- 
parently tasting the flavor of the words. 

Dyer's knowledge of the drama (which formed 
part of the subject of his first publication) 
may be guessed, by his having read Shake- 
speare, " an iiTegular genius," and having 
dipped into Rowe and Otway, but never hav- 



OEOEGE DYEB. 91 

ing heard of any other writers in that class. 
In absence of mind, he probably exceeded 
every other living man. Lamb has set forth 
one instance (which I know to be a fact) of 
Dyer's forgetfulness, in his " Oxford in the 
Vacation ; " and to this various others might 
be added, such as his emptying his snuft-box 
into the teapot when he was preparing break- 
fast for a hungry friend, &c. But it is scarcely 
worth while to chronicle minutely the harm- 
less foibles of this inoffensive old man. If I 
had to write his epitaph, I should say that he 
was neither much respected nor at all hated ; 
too good to dislike, too inactive to excite 
great affection ; and that he was as simple as 
the daisy, which we think we admire, and 
daily tread imder foot. 

In 1799 Charles Lamb visited Cambridge, 
and there, through the introduction of Lloyd, 
made the important acquaintance of Mr. 
Thomas Manning, then a mathematical tutor 
in the university. This soon grew into a close 



92 MANNING. 

intimacy. Charles readily perceived the intel- 
lectual value of Manning, and seems to have 
eagerly sought his friendship, which, he says, 
(December, 1799)? will render the prospect 
of the approaching century very pleasant. 
" That century must needs commence auspi- 
ciously for me" (he adds), "that bring^ with 
it Manning's friendship as an earnest of its 
after gifts." At first sight it appears strange 
that there should be formed a close friendship 
between a youth, a beginner, or student in 
poetry (no more), and a professor of science 
at one of our great seats of learning. But 
these men had, I suppose, an intuitive percep- 
tion of each other's excellences. And there 
sometimes lie behind the outer projections of 
character a thousand concealed shades which 
readily intermingle with those of other people. 
There were amongst Lamb's tender thoughts, 
and Manning's mathematical tendencies, cer- 
tain neutral qualities which assimilated with 
each other, and which eventually served to 



MANNING. 93 

cement that union between them which con- 
tinued unshaken during the lives of both. 
. Lamb's correspondence assumed more char- 
acter, and showed more critical quality, after 
the intimacy with Manning began. His ac- 
quaintance with Southey, in the first instance, 
had the effect of increasing the activity of his 
mind. Previously to that time, his letters had 
consisted chiefly of witticisms (clever indeed, 
but not of surpassing quality), religious 
thoughts, reminiscences, &c., for the most 
part iniadorned and simple. Afterwards, 
especially after the Manning era, they exhibit 
far greater weight of meaning, more fecundity, 
original thoughts, and brilliant allusions ; as if 
the imagination had begun to awaken and 
enrich the understanding. Manning's solid, 
scientific mind had, without doubt, the effect 
of arousing the sleeping vigor of Lamb's in- 
tellect. 

A long correspondence took place between 
them. At first Lamb sent Manninsr his 



94 MANNING. 

opinions only : " Opinion is a species of prop- 
erty that I am always desirous of sharing 
with my friends." Then he communicates the 
fact that George Dyer, " that good-natured 
poet, is now more than nine months gone 
with twin volumes of odes." Afterwards he 
tells him that he is reading Bui^net's History 
of his own Times — ^"full of scandal, as all 
true history is." 

On Manning quitting England for China 
(1806), the letters become less frequent; they 
continue, however, during his absence : one of 
them, surpassing the Elia essay, to " Distant 
Correspondents," is very remarkable ; and 
when the Chinese traveller returned to Lon- 
don, he was very often a guest at Lamb's 
residence. I have repeatedly met him there. 
His countenance was that of an intelligent, 
steady, almost serious man. His journey to 
the Celestial Empire had not been unfruitful of 
good ; his talk at all times being full of curi- 
ous information, including much anecdote, and 



MANNING. 95 

some (not common) speculations on men and 
things. When he retui'ned, he brought with 
him a native of China, whom he took one 
evening to a ball in London, where the for- 
eigner from Shanghai, or Pekin, inquired 
with much naivete as to the amount of money 
which his host had given to the dancers for 
their evening's performance, and was per- 
suaded with difficulty that their exertions 
were entirely gratuitous. 

Manning had a curious habit of bringing 
with him (in his waistcoat pocket) some pods 
of the red pepper, whenever he expected to 
partake of a meal. His original intention 
(as I understood) when he set out for China, 
was to frame and publish a Chinese and Eng- 
lish dictionary ; yet — although he brought over 
much material for the purpose — his purpose 
was never carried into effect. Lamb had great 
love and admiration for him. In a letter to 
Coleridge, in after years (1826), he says, "I 
am glad you esteem Manning ; though you 



96 ' MANNING. 

see but his husk or shrine. He discloses not, 
save to select worshippers, and will leave the 
world without any one hardly but me know- 
ing how stupendous a creature he is." 

During these years Lamb's correspondence 
with Coleridge, Wordsworth, Walter Wilson, 
and Manning (principally with Manning) goes 
on. It is sometimes critical, sometimes jocose. 
He discusses the merits of various authors, 
and more than once expresses his extreme dis- 
taste for didactic writing. Now, he says, it 
is too directly instructive. Then he complains 
that the knowledge, insignificant and vapid as 
it is, rnust come in the s/ia^e of knowledge. 
He could not obtain at Newberry's shop any 
of the old " classics of the Nursery," he 
says ; whilst " Mrs. Barbauld's and Mrs. 
Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about." 

His own domestic affairs struggle on as 
usual ; at one time calm and pleasant, at 
another time troubled and uncomfortable, 
owing to the frequent recurrence of his sis- 



MABY'S ILLNESSES. 97 

ter's malady. In general he bore these 
changes with fortitude ; I do not observe 
more than one occasion on which (being then 
himself ill) his firmness seemed altogether to 
give way. In 1798, indeed, he had said, " I 
consider her perpetually on the brink of mad- 
ness." But in May, 1800, his old servant 
Hetty having died, and Mary (sooner than 
usual) falling ill again, Charles was obliged 
to remove her to an asylum ; and was left 
in the house alone with Hetty's dead body. 
"My heart is quite sick" (he cries), "and I 
don't know where to look for relief. My 
head is very bad. I almost wish that Mary 
were dead." This was the one solitary cry 
of anguish that he uttered during his long 
years of anxiety and suffering. At all other 
times he bowed his head in silence, uncom- 
plaining. 

Charles Lamb, with his sister, left Little 
Qtieen Street on or before 1800; in which 
year he seems to have migrated, first to 
7 



98 EE8TEB SAVORY. 

Chapel Street, Pentonville ; next to South- 
ampton Buildings, Chancery Lane ; and final- 
ly to No. 16 Mitre Court Buildings, in the 
Temple, " a pistol shot off Baron Masere's ; " 
and here he resided for about nine years. 

It was during his stay at Pentonville that 
he " fell in love " w^ith a young Quaker, 
called Hester Savory. As (he confesses) " I 
have never spoken to her during my life," it 
may be safely concluded that the attachment 
was essentially Platonic. This was the young 
girl who inspired those verses, now so vddely 
known and admired. I remember them as 
being the first lines which I ever saw of 
Charles Lamb's writing. I remember and ad- 
mire them still, for their natural, unaffected 
style; no pretence, no straining" for images 
and fancies flying too high above the subject, 
but dealing with thoughts that were near liis 
affections, in a fit and natural manner. The 
conclusion of the poem, composed and sent 
after her death (in February, 1803) to Man- 



POEM ON EESTER SAVORY'S DEATH. 99 

ning, who was then in' Paris, is very sad and 
tender : — 

My sprightly neighbor, gone before 
To that unknown and silent shore, 
Shall we not meet, as heretofore, 

Some summer morning? 

When from thy cheerful eyes a ray 
Hath struck a bliss upon the day, 
A bliss that will not go away, 

A sweet forewarning. 

i.. vr V/, 



( loo ) 



CHAPTER IV. 

(^Migrations,') — " yohn Woodvil." — Blackes- 
moor. — Wordsworth. — Rickjnan. — Godwin. 
— Visit to the Lakes. — Morning Post. — 
Uazlitt. — Nelson. — Ode to Tobacco. — 
Dramatic Specimens., <&c. — Inner Temple 
Lane. — Rejlector. — Hogarth aizd Sir J. 
Reynolds. — Leigh Hunt. — Lamb, Uaz- 
litt, and Hunt. — Russell Street and The- 
atrical Friends. 

IT is not always easy to fix Charles Lamb's 
doings (writings or migrations) to any 
precise date. The year may generally be 
ascertained ; but the day or month is often a 
matter of surmise only. Even the dates of 
the letters are often derived from the post- 
marks, or are sometimes conjectured from 
circumstances.* Occasionally the labors of a 

* As Lamb's changes of residence were frequent, it 
may be convenient to chronicle them in order, in this 



"JOHN WOOBVIL." loi 

drama or of lyric poems traverse several years, 
and are not to be referred to any one definite 
period. Thus "John Woodvil" (his tragedy) 
was begun in i799? printed in 1800, and sub- 
mitted to Mr. Kemble (then manager of Driiry 
Lane Theatre) in the Christmas of that year, 
but was not published until 1801. 

After this tragedy had been in Mr. Kemble's 
hands for about a year, Lamb naturally became 
urgent to hear his decision upon it. Upon 
applying for this he found that his play was — 



place, although the precise date of his moving from one 
to another can scarcely be specified in a single instance. 
1775, Charles Lamb, born in Crown OiSce Row, Temple. 
1795, lives at No. 7 Little Queen Street, Holborn. 1800 
(early), lives at No. 45 Chapel Street, Pentonville. 
Same year, lives in Southampton Buildings, Chancery 
Lane. Same year, removes to No. 16 Mitre Court 
Buildings, Temple. 1809, removes to No. 4 Inner Temple 
Lane. 1817, removes to Russell Street, Covent Garden. 
1823, removes to Colebrook Row, Islington. 1826, re- 
moves to Enfield. 1829, removes into lodgings in Enfield. 
1830, lodges in Southampton Buildings. 1833, lives at 
Mrs. Walden's, in Church Street, Edmonton; where he 
dies on 27th December, 1834. 



I02 ''JOHN WOODVIL." 

lost! This was at once acknowledged, and a 
" courteous request made for another copy, if 
I had one by me." Luckily, another copy ex- 
isted. The " first runnings " of a genius were 
not, therefore, altogether lost, by having been 
cast, without a care, into the dusty limbo of 
the theatre. The other copy was at once sup- 
plied, and the play very speedily rejected. It 
was afterwards facetiously brought forward in 
one of the early numbers of the Edinburgh 
Review, and there noticed as a rude specimen 
of the earliest age of the drama, " older 
than yEschylus ! " 

Lamb met these accidents of fortune man- 
fully, and did not abstain from exercising his 
own Shandean humor thereon. It must be 
confessed that "John Woodvil" is not a tra- 
gedy likely to bring much success to a play- 
house. It is such a drama as a young poet, 
full of love for the Elizabethan writers, and 
without any knowledge of the requisitions of 
the stage, would be likely to produce. There 



SOijTEEY'S OPINION OF " JVOOBVIL." 103 

is no plot ; little probability in the story ; 
which itself is not very scientifically developed. 
There are some pretty lines, especially some 
which have often been the subject of quota- 
tion ; but there is not much merit in the char- 
acters of the drarma, with the exception of the 
heroine, who is a heroine of the " purest 
water." Lamb's friend Southey, in writing 
to a correspondent, pronounces the following 
opinion : " Lamb is printing his play, which 
will please you by the exquisite beauty of its 
poetry, and provoke you by the exquisite sil- 
liness of its story." 

In October, 17995 Lamb went to see the 
remains of the old house (Gilston) in Hert- 
fordshire, where his grandmother once lived, 
and the " old church where the bones of my 
honored granddame lie." This visit was, in 
later years, recorded in the charming paper 

entitled " Blakesmoor in H shire." He 

found that the house where he had spent his 
pleasant holidays, when a little boy, had been 



1 04 " B LAKES MO OB." 

demolished ; it was, in fact, taken down for 
the purpose of reconstruction ; but out of the 
ruins he conjures up pleasant ghosts, whom he 
restores and brings before a younger genera- 
tion. There are few of his papers in which 
the past years of his life are tnore delightfully 
revived- The house had been " reduced to 
an antiquity." But we go with him to the 
grass plat, were he used to read Cowley ; to 
the tapestried bedrooms, where the mythologi- 
cal people of Ovid used to stand forth, half 
alive ; even to " that haunted bedroom in 
which old Sarah • Battle died," ancj into which 
he " used to creep in a passion of fear." 
These things are all touched with a delicate 
pen, mixed and incorporated with tender re- 
flections ; for, " The solitude of childhood " 
(as he says) " is not so much the motlier of 
thought as the feeder of love." With him it 
was both. 

Lamb became acquainted with Wordsworth 
when he visited Coleridge, in the summer of 



ACQUAINTANCE WITH WORDSWOBTH. 105 

1800. At that time his old schoolfellow lived 
at Stowe}^, and the greater poet was his neigh- 
bor. It is not satisfactorily shown in what 
manner the poetry of Wordsworth first attracted 
the notice of Charles Lamb, nor its first effect 
upon him. Perhaps the verse of Coleridge was 
not a bad stepping-stone to that elevation which 
enabled Charles to look into the interior of 
Wordsworth's mind. The two poets were not 
unlike in some respects, although Coleridge 
seldom (except perhaps in the " Ancient Mar- 
iner") ventured into the plain, downright phra- 
seology of the other. It is very soon apparent, 
however, that Lamb was able to admit Words- 
worth's great merits. In August, 1800 (just 
after the completion of his visit to Stowey), he 
writes, " I would pay five and forty thousand 
carriages" (parcel fares) "to read W^ords- 
worth's tragedy. Pi'ay give me an order on 
Longman for the ' Lyrical Ballads.' " And in 
October, 1800, the two authors must have been 
on familiar terms with each other ; for in a let- 



io6 INVITATION FROM WORDSWOBTH. 

ter addressed by Lamb to Wordsworth, " Dear 
Wordsworth," it appears that the latter had 
requested him to advance money for the pur- 
chase of books, to a considerable amount. 
This was at a time when Lamb was " not 
plethorically abounding in cash." The books 
required an outlay of eight pounds, and Lamb 
had not the sum then in his possession. " It 
is a scurvy thing" (he writes) " to cry. Give me 
the money first ; and I am the first of the Lambs 
that has done this for many centuries." Shortly 
afterwards Lamb sent his play to Wordsworth, 
who (this was previous to 30 January, 1801) 
appears to have invited Charles to visit him in 
Cumberland. Our humorist did not accept this 
invitation, being doubtful whether he could 
" afford so desperate a journey," and being (he 
says) "not at all romance-bit about Nature;" 
the earth, and sea, and sky, being, " when all is 
said, but a house to live in." 

It is not part of iny task to adjust the claims 
of the various writers of verse in this country 



KEATS AND WORDSWORTH. 107 

to their stations in the Temple of Fame. If 
Keats was by nature the most essentially a poet 
in the present century, there is little doubt that 
Wordsworth has left his impress more broadly 
and more permanently than any other of our 
later writers upon the literature of England. 
There are barren, unpeopled wastes in the 
" Excursion," and in some of the longer poems ; 
but when his Genius stirs, we find ourselves in 
rich places which have no parallel in any book 
since the death of Milton. When his lyrical 
ballads first appeared, they encountered much 
opposition and some contempt. Readers had 
not for many years been accustomed to drink 
the waters of Helicon pure and undefiled ; and 
Wordsworth (a prophet of the true faith) had 
to gird vip his loins, march into the desert, and 
prepare for battle. He has, indeed, at last 
achieved a conquest ; but a long course of time, 
although sure of eventual success, elapsed before 
he could boast of victory. The battle has been 
perilous. When the " Excursion " was pub- 



io8 ADMIRATION OF WOBDBWORTE. 

lished (in 1814), Lamb wrote a review of it 
for " The Quarterly Review." Whatever might 
have been the actual fitness of this performance, 
it seems to have been hacked to pieces ; more 
than a third of the substance cut away; the 
warm expressions converted into cold ones ; 
and (in Lamb's phrase) " the eyes pulled out 
and the bleeding sockets left." This mangling 
(or amendment, as I suppose it was considered) 
was the work of the late Mr. Gifford. Charles 
had a great admiration for Wordsworth. It 
was short of prostration, however. He states 
that the style of "Peter Bell" does not satisfy 
him; but " ' Hartleap Well' is the tale for 
me," are his words in 1819. 

I have a vivid recollection of Wordsworth, 
who was a very grave man, with strong features 
and a deep voice. I met him first at the cham- 
bers (they were in the Temple) of Mr. Henry 
Crabb Robinson, one of the most amiable of 
men. I was a young versifier, and Wordsworth 
was just emerging out of a cloud of ignorant 



WOBDSWORTH. 109 

contumely into the sunrise of his fame. He 
was fond (perhaps too fond) of reciting his 
own poetry before friends and strangers. I' 
was not attracted by his manner, which was 
ahuost too solemn, but I was deeply impressed 
by some of the weighty notes in his voice, when 
he was delivering out his oracles. I forget 
whether it was "Dion" or the beautiful poem 
of " Laodamia " that he read ; but I remembered 
the reading long afterwards, as one recollects 
the roll of the spent thunder. 

I met Wordsworth occasionally, afterwards, 
at Charles Lamb's, at Mr. Rogers's, and else- 
where, and once he did me the honor to call 
upon me. I remember that he had a very 
gentle aspect when he looked at my children. 
He took the hand of my dear daughter (who 
died lately) in his hand, and spoke some words 
to her, the recollection of which, perhaps, helped, 
with other things, to incline her to poetry. Haz- 
litt says that Wordsworth's face, notwithstanding 
his constitutional gravity, sometimes revealed 



no JOHN EIOKMAN. 

indications of dry humor. And once, at a morn- 
ing visit, I heard him give an account of his 
Slaving breakfasted in company witli Coleridge, 
and allowed him to expatiate to the extent of 
his lungs. " How could you permit him to go 
on and weary himself? " said Rogers ; " why, 
you are to meet him at dinner this evening.^' 
" Yes," replied Wordsworth ; "I know that 
very well ; but we like to take the sting out 
of him beforehand." 

About a year after Lamb's first knowledge of 
Manning, his small stock of friends was en- 
larged by the acquisition of Mr. John Rickman, 
one of the clerks of the House of Commons. 
"He is a most pleasant hand" (writes Lamb), 
" a fine rattling fellow, who has gone through 
life laughing at solemn apes ; himself hugely 
literate, from matter of fact, to Xenophon and 
Plato : he can talk Greek with Porson, anA 
nonsense with me." "He understands you" 
(he adds) " the first time. You never need 
speak twice to him. Fullest of matter, with 



GODWIN. Ill 

least verbosity." A year or two afterwards, 
when Rickman went to Ireland, Lamb wrote 
to Manning, " I have lost by his going what 
seems to me I never, can recover — a finished 
niaji. I almost dare pronounce you never saw 
his equal. His memory will come to me as 
the brazen serpent to the Israelites." Robert 
Southey also, when writing to his brother (in 
1804), says, "Coleridge and Rickman, with 
William Taylor, make my Trinity of living 
greatness." A voluminous correspondence took 
place between Southey and Rickman, ranging 
from 1800 to 1839, in the course of which a 
variety of important subjects — namely, History, 
Antiquities, Political Economy, Poor Law, and 
general Politics were deliberately argued be- 
tween them. From this it appears that Southey, 
whose reading was very extensive, must have 
had great trust in the knowledge and judgment 
of Rickman. 

Lamb's acquaintance with Godwin, Holcroft, 
and Clarkson was formed about this time. 



112 GODWIN. 

Godwin had been introduced to Lamb, by Cole- 
ridge, in 1800. The first interview is made 
memorable by Godwin's opening question : 
"And pray, Mr. Lamb, are you toad or frog?" 
This inquiry, having reference to Gilray's offen- 
sive caricature, did not afford promise of a very 
cheerful intimacy. Lamb, however, who ac- 
corded great respect to Godwin's intellect, did 
not resent it, but received his approaches fa- 
vorably, and indeed entertained him at breakfast 
the next morning. The acquaintance afterwards 
expanded into familiarity ; but I never observed 
the appearance of any warm friendship between 
them. Godwin's precision and extreme cold- 
ness of manner (perhaps of disposition) pre- 
vented this ; and Lamb was able, through all 
his admiration of the other's power, to discern 
those points in his character which were ob- 
noxious to his own. Some years previously, 
Charles had entertained much dislike to the 
philosopher's opinions, and referred to him as 
" that Godwin ; " and afterwards, when eulogiz- 



GODWIN. 113 

ing the quick and fine intellect of Rickman, he 
says, " He does not want explanation, transla- 
tions, limitations, as Godwin does, when you 
make an assertion." 

When Godwin published his " Essay on Sep- 
ulchres," wherein he professed to erect a 
wooflen slab ^d a white cross, to be perpetu- 
ally renewed to the end of time (" to survive 
the fall of empires," as Miss Lamb says), in 
order to distinguish the site of every great man's 
grave. Lamb speaks of the project in these 
terms : " Godwin has written a pretty absurd 
book about Sepulchres. He was affronted be- 
cause I told him that it was better than Hervey, 
but not so good as Sir Thomas Browne." Suf- 
ficient intimacy, however, had arisen between 
them to induce Lamb to write a facetious epi- 
logue to Godwin's tragedy of " Antonio ; or, 
the Soldier's Return." This came out in 1800, 
and was very speedily damned ; although Lamb 
said that " it had one fine line ; " which indeed 
he repeated occasionally. Godwin bore this 



114 VISIT TO THE LAKE 8. 

failure, it must be admitted, without being de- 
pressed by it, although he was a very poor man, 
and although he was " five hundred pounds ideal 
money out of pocket by the failure." 

In 1802 Lamb visited Coleridge, who was 
then living near Keswick, in Cumberland. For 
the first time in his life he bHield lakea and 
mountains ; and the effect upon him was star- 
tling and unexpected. It was much like the 
impression made by the first sight of the Alps 
upon Leigh Hunt, who had theretofore always 
maintained that those merely great heaps of earth 
ought to have no effect upon a properly con- 
stituted mind ; but he freely confessed after- 
wards, that he had been mistaken. Lamb 
had been more than once invited to visit the 
romantic Lake country. He had no desire to 
inspect the Ural chain, where the malacliite is 
hidden, nor the silver regions of Potosi ; but 
he was all at once affected by a desire of " vis- 
iting remote regions." It was a sudden irrita- 
bility, which could only be quieted by travel. 



VISIT TO THE LAKES. 115 

Charles and his sister therefore went, without 
giving any notice to Coleridge, who, however, 
received them very kindly, and gave up all his 
time in order to show them the wonders of 
the neighborhood. The visitors arrived there 
in a " gorgeous sunset " (the only one that 
Lamb saw during his stay in the country), and 
thought that they had got " inta fairy-land." 
" We entered Coleridge's study " (he writes to 
Manning, shortly afterwards) "just in the 
dusk, when the mountains were all dark. Such 
an impression I never received from objects of 
sight, nor do I suppose I ever can again. Glori- 
ous creatures, Skiddaw, &c. I shall never forget 
how ye lay about that night, like an intrench- 
ment ; gone to bed, as it seemed, for the night." 
They went to Coleridge's house, in which 
" he had a large, antique, ill-shaped room, 
with an old organ, never played upon, an 
yEolian harp, and shelves of scattered folios,'' 
and remained there three weeks, visiting Words- 
worth's cottage, he himself being absent, and 



Ii6 BETUBN TO LONDON. 

meeting the Clarksons (" good, hospitable peo- 
ple"). They tarried there one night, and 
met Lloyd. They clambered up to the top 
of Skiddaw, " and went to Grassmere, Am- 
bleside, UUswater, and over the middle of 
Helvellyn." Coleridge then dwelt upon a 
small hill by the side of Keswick, quite " en- 
veloped on all sides by a net of mountains." 
On his return to London, Lamb wrote to his 
late host, saying, " I feel I shall remember 
your mountains to the last day of my life. 
They haunt me perpetually. I am like a man 
who has been falling in love unknown to 
himself, which he finds out when he leaves 
the lady." He soon subsided, however, into 
his old natural metropolitan happiness. 

Wordsworth was not in the Lake country 
when Lamb visited Coleridge ; but after his 
return the great poet vi&ited Charles in Lon- 
don, passed some time there, and then de- 
parted for Yorkshire, where he went in order 
to be married. 



''MORNING POST." 117 

At this time Lamb contributed (generally 
facetiae) to various newspapers, now forgotten. 
One of them, it was said jocosely, had " two 
and twenty readers, including the pi'inter, the 
pressman, and the devil." But he was still 
very poor ; so poor that ^oleridge offered to 
supply him with prose translations from the 
German, in order that he might versify them 
for the "Morning Post," and thus obtain a 
little money. In one of his letters Lamb 
says, " If I got or could but get fifty pounds a 
year only, in addition to what I have, I should 
live in affluence." 

About the time that he is writing this, he is 
recommending Chapman's "Homer" to Cole- 
ridge ; is refusing to admit Coleridge's dona 
jide debt to himself of fifteen pounds ; is com- 
posing Latin letters ; and in other respects de- 
porting himself like a " gentleman who lives at 
home at ease ; " not like a poor clerk, obliged 
to husband his small means, and to deny 
himself the cheap luxury of books that he had 



Ii8 LAMB'S POVERTY. 

long coveted. "Do you remember" (his sis- 
ter says to him, in the Essay on " Old China") 
" the brown suit that grew so threadbare, all 
because of that folio of Beaumont and Fletcher 
that you dragged home late at night from 
Barker's, in Covej;it Garden ; when you set 
off near ten o'clock, on Saturday night, from 
Islington, fearing you should be too late ; and 
when you lugged it home, wishing it was 
twice as cumbersome,^' &c. 

These realities of poverty, very imperfectly 
covered over by words of fiction, are very 
touching. It is deeply interesting, that Essay, 
where the rare enjoyments of a poor scholar 
are brought into contrast and relief with the 
indifference that grows upon him when his 
increased income enables him to acquire any 
objects he pleases. Those things are no 
longer distinguished as " enjoyments " which 
are not purchased by a sacrifice. " A pur- 
chase is but a purchase now. Formerly" it 
used to be a triumph. A thing was worth 



WILLIAM HAZLITT. 119 

buying when we felt the money that we paid 
for it." 

(1804.) The intimacy of that extraordinary 
man, William Hazlitt, was the great gain of 
Lamb at this period of his life. If Lamb's 
youngest and tenderest reverence was given 
to Coleridge, Hazlitt's intellect must also 
have commanded his later permanent respect. 
Without the imagination and extreme facility 
of Coleridge, he had almost as much subtlety 
and far more steadfastness of mind. Perhaps 
this steadfastness remained sometimes until it 
took the color of obstinacy ; but, as in the 
case of his constancy to the first Napoleon, 
it was obstinacy riveted and made firm by 
some concurring respect. I do not know 
that Hazlitt had the more affectionate nature 
of the two ; but assuredly he was less tossed 
about and his sight less obscured by floating 
fancies and vast changing projects {inuscce 
voUtantes) than the other. To the one are 
ascribed fierce and envious passions ; coarse 



I20 EAZLITT. 

thoughts and habits — (he has indeed been 
crownM by defamation) ; whilst to Coleridge 
have been awarded reputation and glory, and 
praise from a thousand tongues. To secure 
justice we miust wait for unbiassed posterity. 
I meet, at present, with few persons who 
recollect much of Hazlitt. Some profess to 
have heard nothing of him except his preju- 
dices and violence ; but his prejudices were 
few, and his violence (if violence he had) 
was of very rare occurrence. He was ex- 
tremely patient, indeed, although earnest when 
discussing points in politics, respecting which 
he held very strong and decided opinions. 
But he circulated his thoughts on many other 
subjects, whereon he ought not to have ex- 
cited offence or opposition. He wrote (and 
he wrote well) upon many things lying far 
beyond the limits of politics. To use his own 
words, " I have at least glanced over a num- 
ber of subjects — painting, poetry, prose, plays, 
politics, parliamentary speakers, metaphysical 



EAZLITT. 121 

lore, books, men, and things." This list, ex- 
tensive as it is, does not specify very precisely 
all the subjects on which he wi'ote. His 
thoughts range over the literature of Elizabeth 
and James's times, and of the time of Charles 
II. ; over a large portion of modern literature ; 
over the distinguishing character of men, 
their peculiarities of mind and manners ; 
over the wonders of poetry, the subtleties of 
metaphysics, and the luminous regions of art. 
In painting, his criticisms (it is prettily said 
by Leigh Hunt) cast a light upon the sub- 
ject like the glory reflected " from a painted 
wmdow." I myself have, in my library, 
eighteen volumes of Hazlitt's works, and I 
do not possess all that he published. Be- 
sides being an original thinker, Hazlitt ex- 
celled in conversation. He was, moreover, 
a very temperate liver : yet his enemies pro- 
claimed to the world that he was wanting even 
in sobriety. During the thirteen years that I 
knew him intimately, and (at certain seasons) 



132 EAZLITT. 

saw him almost every day, I know that he 
drank nothing stronger than water ; except tea, 
indeed, in which he indulged in the morning. 
Had he been as temperate in his political 
views as in his cups, he would have escaped 
the slander that pursued him through life. 

The great intimacy between these two distin- 
guished writers, Charles Lamb and William 
Hazlitt (for they had known each other be- 
fore), seems to have commenced in a singular 
manner. They were one day at Godwin's, 
when " a fierce dispute was going on between 
Holcroft and Coleridge, as to which was best, 
' Man as he was, or Man as he is to be.' ' Give 
me,' says Lamb, ' man as he is not to be.' " 
" This was the beginning " (Hazlitt says,) "of 
a friendship which, I believe, still continues." 
Hazlitt married in 1805, and his wife soon 
became familiar with Mary Lamb. Indeed, 
Charles and his sister more than once visited 
the Hazlitts, who at that time lived at Win- 
terslow, near Salisbury Plain, and enjoyed 



EAZLITT. 123 

theii* visits greatly, walking from eight to 
twenty miles a day, and seeing Wilton, Stone- 
henge, and the other (to them unaccustomed) 
sights of the country. " The quiet, lazy, de- 
licious month " passed there is referred to in 
one of Miss Lamb's pleasant letters. And 
the acquaintance soon deepened into friend- 
ship. Whatever good will was exhibited by 
Hazlitt (and there was much) is repaid by 
Lamb in his letter to Southey, published in 
the "London Magazine" (October, 1833), 
wherein he places on record his pride and 
admiration of his friend. " So far from being 
ashamed of the intimacy" (he says), " it is my 
boast that I was able, for so many years, to 
have preserved it entire ; and I think I shall 
go to my grave without finding or expecting 
to find such another companion." 

Lamb's respect for men and things did not 
depend on repute. His fondness for old books 
seldom (never, perhaps, except in the single 
case of the Duchess of Newcastle) deluded 



124 NELSON. 

him into a respect for old books which were 
without merit. He required that excellence 
should be combined with antiquity. A great 
name was generally to him simply a great 
name ; no more. If it had lasted through cen- 
turies, indeed, as in the case of Michael An- 
gelo, then he admitted that " a great name 
implied greatness." He did. not think that 
greatness lay in the " thews and sinews," or 
in the bulk alone. When Nelson was walking 
on the quay at Yarmouth, the mob cried out 
in derision, " What ! make that little fellow a 
captain ! " Lamb thought otherwise ; and in 
regret for the death of that great seaman, he 
says, " I have followed him ever since I saw 
him walking in Pall Mall, looking just as 
a hero should look " (/. e., simply). "He 
was the only pretence of a great man we 
had." The large stage blusterer and ostenta- 
tious drawcansir were never, in Lamb's esti- 
mation, models for heroes. Li the case of 
the first Napoleon also, he writes, " He is a 



ODE TO TOBACCO. 125 

fine fellow, as my barber says ; and I should 
not mind standing bareheaded at his table to' 
do him service in his fall." This was in Au- 
gust, 1815. 

The famous "Ode to Tobacco" was written 
in 1805, and the pretty stories founded on the 
■plays of Shakespeare were composed or trans- 
lated about the year 1806 ; Lamb taking the 
tragic, and his sister the other share of the 
version. These tales were to produce about 
sixty pounds ; to them a sum which was most 
important, for he and Mary at that time hailed 
the addition of twenty pounds to his salary 
(on the retirement of an elder clerk) as a 
grand addition to their comforts. 

Charles was at this period (February, 1806) 
at work upon a farce, to be called " Mr. H. ; " 
from which he says, "if it has a 'good run' 
I shall get two hundred pounds, and I hope 
one hundred pounds for the copyright." " Mr. 
H." (which rested solely upon the absurdity 
of a name, which after all was not ii'resistibly 



126 EIS FARCE. 

absurd) was accepted at the theatre, but un- 
fortunately it had noi " a good run." It failed, 
not quite undeservedly perhaps, for (although 
it has since had some success in America) 
there was not much probability of its pros- 
perity in London. It was acted once (loth 
December, 1806), and was announced for rep- 
etition on the following evening, but was 
withdrawn. Lamb's courage and good humor 
did not fail. He joked about it to Words- 
worth, said that he had many fears about it, 
and admitted that "John Bull required solider 
fare than a bare letter." As he says, in his 
letter to the poet, " a hundred hisses (hang 
the word, I write it like kisses) outweigh a 
thousand claps. The former come more 
directly from the heart. Well" (he adds), "it 
is withdrawn, and there's an end." 

In 1807 were published " Specimens of 
Dramatic Poets contemporary with Shake- 
speare ; " and these made Lamb known as a 
man conversant with our old English litera- 



DRAMATIC SPECIMENS, ETC. 127 

ture, and helped mainly to direct the taste 
of the public to those fine writers. The book 
brought repute (perhaps a little money) to 
him. Soon afterwards he published " The 
Adventures of Ulysses," which was intended 
to be an introduction to the reading of " Te- 
lemachus," always a popular book. These 
" adventures " were derived from Chapman's 
" Translation of Homer," of which Lamb 
says, " Chapman is divine ; and my abridg- 
ment has not, I hope, quite emptied him of 
his divinity." 

In or about 1808 Miss Lamb's pretty little 
stories called "Mrs. Leicester's School" (to 
which Charles contributed three tales) v^^ere 
published ; and soon afterwards a small bo6k 
entitled " Poetry for Children," being a joint 
publication by brother and sister, came out. 
" It was done by me and Mary in the last six 
months" (January, 1809). It does not appear 
to what extent, if at all, it added to the poor 
clerk's means. 



128 INNER TEMPLE LANE. 

In the same year (as Miss Lamb writes in 
December, 1808), Charles was invited by Tom 
Sheridan to write some scenes in a speaking 
Pantomime ; the other parts of which (the 
eloquence not of words) had been already 
manufactured by Tom and his more cele- 
brated father, Richard Brinsley. Lamb and 
Tom Sheridan had been, it seems, communi- 
cative over a bottle of claret, when an agree- 
ment for the above purpose was entered into 
between them. This was subsequently carried 
into effect, and a drama was composed. This 
drama, still extant in the British Museum, in 
Lamb's own writing, appears to be a species 
of comic opera, the scene of which is laid in 
GilDraltar, but is without a name. I have not 
seen it, but speak upon the report of others. 

In 1809 Lamb moved once more into the 
Temple, now to the top story of No. 4 Inner 
Temple Lane, " where the household gods are 
slow to come, but where I mean to live and 
die" (he says). From this place (since 



TRANSIENT ABSTINENCE. 129 

pulled down and rebuilt) he writes to Man- 
ning, who is in China, " Come, and bi-ing 
any of your friends the Mandarins with you. 
My best room commands a court, in which 
there are trees and a pump, the water of 
which is excellent cold — with brandy ; and 
not very insipid without." He sends Man- 
ning some of his little books, to give him 
" some idea of European literature." It is in 
this letter (January, 18 10) that he speaks of 
Braham and his singing, which I have else- 
where alluded to ; of Kate with nine stars 
********* ("though she is but 
one"); of his book (for children) "on titles 
of honor," exemplifying the eleven gradations, 
by which Mi'. C. Lamb rises in succession to 
be Baron, Marquis, Duke, and Emperor Lamb, 
and finally Pope Innocent, and other lively 
matters fit to solace an English mathematician 
self-banished to China. 

In July, 1810, an abstinence from all spirit- 
vious liquors took place. Lamb says tliat his 
9 



130 HOGARTH. 

sister has " taken to water like a hungry- 
otter," whilst he " limps after her " for virtue's 
sake ; but he is " full of cramps and rheu- 
matism, and cold internally, so that fire don't 
warm him." It is scarcely necessary to state 
that the period of entire abstinence was very- 
transient. 

A quarterly magazine, called " The Reflect- 
or," was published in the autumn of 18 10, 
and contained Essays by Charles Lamb and 
several other writers. Amongst these are 
some of the best of Lamb's earlier writings — 
namely, the paper on Hogarth and that on 
the Tragedies of Shakespeare. It is singular 
that these two Essays, which are as fine as 
anything of a similar nature in English criti- 
cism, should have been almost unnoticed (vni- 
discovered, except by literary friends) until the 
year 1818, when Lamb's works were collected 
and published. The grand passage on " Lear " 
has caused the Essay on the Shakespeare Tra- 
gedies to be well known. Less known is 



EO GARTH AND REYNOLDS. 131 

the Essay on Hogarth, although it is more 
elaborate and critical ; the labor being quite 
necessary in this case, as »the pretensions of 
Hogarth to the grand style had been 
denounced by Sir Joshua Reynolds. 

In affluence of genius, in variety and exu- 
berance of thought, there surely can exist 
little comparison between Reynolds and Ho- 
garth. Reynolds was, indeed, the finest painter, 
especially the most superb colorist, of the Eng- 
lish school. But Hogarth was the greatest 
inventor, — the greatest discoverer of character, 
— in the English or any other school. As a 
painter of manners he is unapproached. In a 
kindred walk, he traversed all the passions 
from the lowest mirth to the profoundest mel- 
ancholy, possessing the tragic element in the 
most eminent degree. And if grandeur can 
exist — as I presume it can — in beings who 
have neither costume nor rank to set off their 
qualities, then some of the characters of Ho- 
garth in essential grandeur are far beyond the 



132 EOGABTH AND REYNOLDS. 

conventional figures of many other artists. 
Pain, and joy, and poverty, and human daring 
are not to be circu«iscribed by dress and fash- 
ion. Their seat is deeper (in the soul), and 
is altogether independent of such trivial accre- 
tions. In point of expression, I never saw 
the face of the madman (in the " Rake's 
Progress") exceeded in any picture, ancient 
or modern. "It is a face " (Lamb says) 
" that no one that has seen can easily forget." 
It is, as he argues, human suffering stretched 
to its utmost endurance. I cannot forbear 
directing the attention of the reader to Lamb's 
bold and excellent defence of Hogarth. He 
will like both painter and author, I think, 
better than before. I have, indeed, been in 
company where young men, professing to be 
painters, spoke slightingly of Hogarth. To 
this I might have replied that Hogarth did not 
paint for the applause of tyros in art, but — 
for the world ! 

The "Reflector" was edited by an old 



LEIGH HUNT. 133 

Christ's Hospital boy, Mr. Leigh Hunt, who 
subsequently became, and during their joint 
lives remained, one of Lamb's most familiar 
friends. It was a quarterly magazine, and re- 
ceived, of coui"se, the contributions of various 
writers ; amongst whom were Mr. Barnes (of 
the "Times"), Barron Field, Dr. Aikin, Mr. 
Landseer (the elder), Charles Lamb, Octavius 
Gilchrist, Mitchell (the translator of Aristoph- 
anes), and Leigh Hunt himself. I do not 
observe Lamb's name appended to any of the 
articles in the first volume ; but the second 
comprises the Essays on Hogarth and on 
Burial Societies, together with a paper on the 
Custom of Hissing at the Theatres, under the 
signature of " Semel Damnatus." There is a 
good deal of humor in this paper (which has 
not been republished, I believe). It professes 
to come from one of a club of condemned 
authors, no person being admissible as a mem- 
ber until he had been unequivocally damned. 
I'observe that in the letters, &c., of Lamb, 



134 LAMB, HAZLITT, AND HUNT. 

which were published in 1841, and copiously 
commented on by Sir Thomas N. Talfourd 
(the editor), there is not much beyond a bare 
mention of Leigh Hunt's name, and no letter 
from Charles Lamb to Mr. Hunt is published. 
It is now too late to remedy this last defect, 
my recent endeavors to obtain such letters 
having resulted in disappointment: otherwise 
I should have been very glad to record the 
extent of Lamb's liking for a poor and able 
man, whom I knew well for at least forty 
years. I know that at one time Lamb valued 
him, and that he always thought highly of his 
intellect, as indeed he has testified in his 
famous remonstrance to Southey. And in Mr. 
Hunt's autobiography I find abundant evidence 
of his admiration for Lamb, in a generous 
eulogy upon him. 

Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and Leigh 
Hunt, formed a remarkable trio of men, each 
of whom was decidedly different from the 
others. Only one of them (Hunt) cared much 



LAMB, EAZLITT, AND HUNT. 135 

for praise. Hazlitt's sole ambition was to sell 
his essays, which he rated scarcely beyond 
their marketable value ; and Lamb saw enough 
of the manner in which praise and censure 
were at that time distributed, to place any 
high value on immediate success. Of posterity 
neither of them thought. Leigh Hunt, from 
temperament, was more alive to pleasant in- 
fluences (sunshine, freedom for work, rural 
walks, complimentary words) than the others. 
Hazlitt cared little for these things ; a fierce 
argument or a well-contested game at rackets 
was more to his taste ; whilst Lamb's pleasures 
(except, perhaps, from his pipe) lay amongst 
the books of the old English writers. His soul 
delighted in communion with ancient genera- 
tions, more especially with men who had 
been unjustly forgotten. Hazlitt's mind at- 
tached itself to abstract subjects ; Lamb's was 
more practical, and embraced men. Hunt 
was somewhat indifferent to persons as well 
as to things, except in the cases of Shelley 



136 LAMB, EAZLITT, AND HUNT. 

and Keats, and his own family ; yet he liked 
poetry and poetical subjects. Hazlitt (who 
was ordinarily very shy) was the best talker 
of the three. Lamb said the most pithy and 
brilliant things. Hunt displayed the most inge- 
nuity. All three sympathized often with the 
same persons or the same books ; and this, 
no doubt, cemented the intimacy that existed 
between them for so many years. Moreover, 
each of them understood the others, and 
placed just value on their objections when 
any difference of opinion (not infrequent) arose 
between them. Without being debaters, they 
were accomplished talkers. They did not 
argue for the sake of conquest, but to strip 
off the mists and perplexities which sometimes 
obscure truth. These men — who lived long 
ago — had a great share of my regard. They 
were all slandered, chiefly by men who knew 
little of them, and nothing of their good qual- 
ities ; or by men who saw them only through 
the mist of political or religious animosity. 



LAMB, EAZLITT, AND HUNT. 137 

Perhaps it was partly for this reason that they 
came nearer to my heart. 

All the three men, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Hunt, 
were throughout their lives Unitarians, as was 
also George Dyer ; Coleridge was a Unitarian 
preacher in his youth, having seceded from 
the Church of England ; to which, however, 
he returned, and was in his latter years a 
strenuous supporter of the national faith. 
George Dyer once sent a pamphlet to convert 
Charles to Unitarianism. " Dear blundering 
soul" (Lamb said), "why, I am as old a One 
Goddite as himself." To Southey Lamb 
writes, " Being, as you know, not quite a 
Churchman, I felt a jealousy at the Church 
taking to herself the whole deserts of Chris- 
tianity." His great, and indeed infinite rev- 
erence, nevertheless, for Christ is shown in 
his own Christian virtues and in constant ex- 
pressions of reverence. In Hazlitt's paper of 
" Persons one would wish to have seen," 
Lamb is made to refer to Jesus Christ as he 



138 MABY LAMB'S ILLNESSES. 

" who once put on a semblance of mortality," 
and to say, " If he were to come into the 
rooin, we should all fall dbwn and kiss the 
hem of his garment." I do not venture to 
comment on these delicate matters, where 
men like Hazlitt, and Lamb, and Coleridge 
(the latter for a short time only) have enter- 
tained opinions which differ from those of the 
generality of their countrymen. 

During these years, Mary Lamb's illnesses 
were frequent, as usual. Her relapses were 
not dependent on the seasons ; they came in 
hot summers and with the freezing winters. 
The only remedy seems to have been extreme 
quiet when any slight symptom of uneasiness 
was apparent. Charles (poor fellow) had to 
live, day and night, in the society of a person 
who was — mad ! If any exciting talk occurred, 
he had to dismiss his friend with a whisper. 
If any stupor or extraordinary silence was ob- 
served, then he had to rouse her instantly. He 
has been seen to take the kettle from the fire 



THEATRICAL ACQUAINTANCES. 139 

and place it for a moment on her head-dress, 
in order to startle her into recollection. He 
lived in a state of constant anxiety ; — and there 
was no help. 

Not to neglect Charles Lamb's migrations, it 
should be noted that he moved his residence 
from Inner Temple Lane (" w^here he meant to 
live and die ") into Russell Street, Covent Gar- 
den, in the latter part of the year 181 7. When 
there, he became personally acquainted w^ith 
several members of the theatrical profession ; 
amongst others, with Munden and Miss Kelly, 
for both of whom he entertained the highest 
admiration. One of the (Elia) Essays is written 
to celebrate Munden's histrionic talent ; and in 
his letters he speaks of " Fanny Kelly's divine 
plain face." The Barbara S. of the second (or 
last) series of essays is, in fact, Miss Kelly her- 
self. All his friends knew that he was greatly 
attached to her. 

He also became acquainted with Miss Burrell 
— afterwards Mrs. Gould — but who, he says, 



140 THEATRICAL ACQUAINTANCES. 

" remained uncoined." Subsequently he was 
introduced to Liston and Elliston, each of whom 
received tokens of his liking. The first was the. 
subject of an amusing fictitious biography. In 
Lamb's words, it was " a lying life of Liston," 
uncontaminated by a particle of truth. Mun- 
den, he says, had faces innumerable ; Liston 
had only one; "but what a face!" he adds, 
admitting it to be beyond all vain description. 
Perhaps this subject of universal laughter and 
admiration never received such a compliment, 
except from Hazlitt, who, after commenting on 
Hogarth's excellences, his invention, his charac- 
ter, his satire, &c., concludes by saying, " I have 
never seen anything in the expression of comic 
humor equal to Hogarth's humor, except Lis- 
ton's face." 

In the course of time, official labor becomes 
tiresome, and the India House clerk grows 
splenetic. He complains sadly of his work. 
Even the incursions of his familiars annoy 
him, although it annoys him more when they 



WORKS PUBLISHED. 141 

go away. In the midst of this trouble his worlvs 
are collected and published ; and he emerges 
at once from the obscure shades of Leadenhall 
Street into the full blaze of public notice. He 
wakes from dullness and discontent, and " finds 
himself famous." 



( 142 ) 



CHAPTER V. 

My Recollections. — Russell Street. — Person- 
al Appearance. — Manner. — Tendency of 
Mind. — Prejudices. — Alleged Excesses. — 
Mode of Life. — Love of Smoking. — His 
Lodgiitgs. — His Sister. — Costume. — Read- 
ing aloud. — Pastes and Opinions. — Lo?i- 
don. — Love of Books. — Charity. — Wednes- 
day Parties. — His Compatzions. — Epitaph 
upon them. 

N the year 1817 or 1818 I first became per- 
sonally acquainted with Charles Lamb. 
This was about the time of his removal from 
the Temple. It was in the course of the year 
181 8 that his works had been first collected and 
published. They came upon the world by sur- 
prise ; scarcely any one at that time being aware 
that a fine genius and humorist existed, within 
the dull shades of London, whose quality very 
few of the critics had assayed, and none of them 



PEBSONAL APPEARANCE. 143 

had commended. He was thus thrown (waif- 
like) amongst the great body of the people ; was 
at once estimated, and soon rose into renown. 

Persons who had been in the habit of travers- 
ing Govent Garden at that time (seven and 
forty years ago) might, by extending their walk 
a few yards into Russell Street, have noted a 
small, spare man, clothed in black, who went 
out every morning and returned every afternoon, 
as regularly as the hands of the clock moved 
towards certain hours. You could not mistake 
him. He was somewhat stiff in his manner, 
and almost clerical in dress ; which indicated 
much wear. He had a long, melancholy face, 
with keen, penetrating eyes ; and he walked, 
with a short, resolute step, city-wards. He 
looked no one in the face for more than a mo- 
ment, yet contrived to see everything as he went 
on. No one who ever studied the human features 
could pass him by without recollecting his coun- 
tenance : it was full of sensibility, and it came 
upon you like a new thought, which you could 



144 PERSONAL APPEAEANGE. 

not help dwelling upon afterwards ; it gave rise 
to meditation, and did you good. This small, 
half-clerical man was — Charles Lamb. 

I had known him for a short time previ- 
ously to 1818, having been introduced to him 
at Mr. Leigh Kunt's house, where I enjoyed 
his company once or twice over agreeable 
suppers ; but I knew him slightly only, and did 
not see much of him until he and his sister 
went to occupy the lodgings in Russell Sti'eet, 
where he invited me to come and see him. 
They lived in the corner house adjoining Bow 
Street. This house belonged, at that time, to 
an ironmonger (or brazier), and was comfort- 
able and clean, — and a little noisy. 

Charles Lamb was about forty years of age 
when I first saw him ; and I knew him inti- 
mately for the greater part of twenty years. 
Small and spare in person, and with small 
legs ("immaterial legs" Hood called them), 
he had a dark complexion, dark, curling hair, 
almost black, and a grave look, lightening up 



PERSONAL APPEARANOE. 145 

occasionally, and capable of sudden merriment. 
His laugh was seldom excited by jokes merely 
ludicrous ; it was never spiteful ; and his quiet 
smile was sometimes inexpressibly sweet : per- 
haps it had a touch of sadness in it. His mouth 
was well shaped ; his lip tremulbus with expres- 
sion ; his brown eyes were quick, restless, and 
glittering ; and he had a grand head, full of 
thought. Leigh Hunt said that " he had a 
head worthy of Aristotle." Hazlitt calls it " a 
fine Titian head, full of dumb eloquence." I 
knew that, before he had attained the age of 
twenty years, he had to make his way in the 
world, and that his lines had not been cast in 
pleasant places. I had heard, indeed, that his 
family had at one time consisted of a father and 
mother and an insane sister ; all helpless and 
poor, and all huddled togetlier in a small lodg- 
ing, scarcely large enough to admit of their 
moving about without restraint. It is difficult 
to imagine a more disheartening youth. Never- 
theless, out of this desert, in which no hope 
10 



146 MANNEB. 

was visible, he rose up eventually a cheerful man 
(cheerful w^hen his days w^ere not clouded by his 
sister's illness); a charming companion, full of 
' pleasant and gentle fancies, and the finest hu- 
morist of his age. 

Although som'etimes strange in manner, he 
was thoroughly unaffected ; in serious matters 
thoroughly sincere. He was, indeed (as he 
confesses) , terribly shy ; diffident, not awkward 
in manner ; with occasionally nervous, twitch- 
ing motions that betrayed this infirmity. He 
dreaded the criticisms of sen^ants far more 
than the observations of their masters. To 
undergo the scrutiny of the first, as he said to 
me, when we were going to breakfast with 
Mr. Rogers one morning, was " terrible." His 
speech was brief and pithy ; not too often hu- 
morous ; never sententious nor didactic. Al- 
though he sometimes talked whilst walking up 
and down the room (at which time he seldom 
looked at the person with whom he was talk- 
ing), he very often spoke as if impelled by the 



TENDENCY OF MIND. 147 

necessity of speaking — suddenly, precipitately. 
If he could have spoken very easily, he might 
possibly have uttered long sentences, exposi- 
tions, or orations ; such as some of his friends 
indulged in, to the titter confusion of their 
hearers. 

But he knew the value of silence ; and he 
knew that even truth may be damaged by too 
many words. When he did speak, his words 
had a flavor in them beyond any that I have 
heard elsewhere. His conversation dwelt upon 
persons or things within his own recollection, 
or it opened (with a startling doubt, or a ques- 
tion, or a piece of quaint humor) the great circle 
of thought. 

In temper he was quick, but easily appeased. 
He never affected that exemption from sensi- 
bility which has sometimes been mistaken for 
philosophy, and has conferred reputation upon 
little men. In a word, he exhibited his emo- 
tions in a fine, simple, natural manner. Con- 
trary to the usual habits of wits, no retort oi 



148 PREJUDICES. 

reply by Lamb, however smart in character, 
ever gave pain. It is clear that ill nature is 
not w^it, and that there may be sparkling 
flov\^ers v\^hich are not surrounded by thorns. 
Lamb's dissent vs^as very intelligible, but never 
superfluously demonstrative ; often, indeed, ex- 
pressed by his countenance only ; sometimes 
merely by silence. 

He v^as more pleasant to some persons 
(more pleasant, I confess, to ;;ze) for the few 
faults or weaknesses that he had. He did 
not daunt us, nor throw us to a distance, by 
his formidable virtues. We sympathized with 
him ; and this sympathy, which is a union 
between two similitudes, does not exist between 
perfect and imperfect natures. Like all of us, he 
had a few prejudices : he did not like French- 
men ; he shrunk from Scotchmen (excepting, 
however. Burns) ; he disliked bankrupts ; he 
hated close bargainers. For the Jewish nation 
he entertained a mysterious awe : the Jewesses 
he admired, with trembling: "Jael had those 



ALLEGED EXCESSES. 149 

full, dark, inscrutable eyes," he says. Of Bra- 
ham's triumphant singing he repeatedly spoke ; 
there had been nothing like it in his recollec- 
tion : he considered him equal to Mrs. Siddons. 
In his letters he characterizes him as " a 
mixture of the Jew, the gentleman, and the 
angel." He liked chimney-sweepers — the 
young ones — the " innocent blacknesses;" and 
with beggars he had a strong sympathy. He 
always spoke tenderly of them, and has writ- 
ten upon them an essay full of beauty. Do not 
be frightened (he says) at the hard words, im- 
posture, &c. " Cast thy bread upon the waters : 
some have unawares entertained angels." 

Much injustice has been done to Lamb by 
accusing him of excess in drinking. The 
truth is, that a small quantity of any strong 
liquid (wine, &c.) disturbed his speech, which 
at best was but an eloquent stammer. The 
distresses of his early life made him ready to 
resort to any remedy which brought forgetful- 
ness ; and he himself, frail in body and excitable. 



150 MODE OF LIFE. 

was very speedily affected. During all my inti- 
macy with him, I never knew him drink im- 
moderately ; except once, when, having been 
prevailed upon to abstain altogether from wine 
and spirits, he resented the vow thus forced 
upon him by imbibing an extraordinary quan- 
tity of the "spurious" liquid. When he says, 
" The waters have gone over me," he speaks 
in metaphor, not historically. He was never 
vanquished by water, and seldom by wine. 
His energy, or mental power, was indeed sub- 
ject to fluctuation ; no excessive merriment, 
perhaps, but much depression. "My waking 
life," he writes, " has much of the confusion, 
the trouble, and obscure perplexity of an ill 
dream. In the daytime I stumble upon dark 
mountains." 

Lamb's mode of life was temperate, his din- 
ner consisting of meat, with vegetables and 
bread only. " We have a sure hot joint on Sun- 
days," he writes, "and when had we better?" 
He appears to have had a relish for game, 



MODE OF LIFE. 151 

roast pig, and brawn, &c., roast pig espe- 
cially, when given to him ; but his poverty 
first, and afterwards his economical habits, 
prevented his indulging in such costly luxu- 
ries. He was himself a small and delicate 
eater at all times ; and he entertained some- 
thing like aversion towards great feeders. 
During a long portion of his life, his means 
were much straitened. The reader may note 
his want of money in several of his letters. 
Speaking of a play, he says, " I am quite 
aground for a plan-; and / mztst do something 
for money r 

He was restless and fond of walking. I do 
not think that he could ride on horseback; 
but he could walk during all the day. He 
had, in that manner, traversed the whole of 
London and its suburbs (especially the north- 
ern and north-eastern parts) frequently. " I 
cannot sit and think," he said. Tired with 
exercise, he went to bed early, except when 
friends supped with him ; and he always rose 



152 LOVE OF SMOKING. 

early, from necessity, being obliged to attend 
at his office, in Leadenhall Street, every day, 
from ten until four o'clock — sometimes later. 
It was there that his familiar letters were 
written. On his return, after a humble meal, 
he strolled (if it was summer) into the suburbs, 
or traversed the streets where the old book- 
shops were to be found. He seldom or never 
gave dinners. You were admitted at all times 
to his plain supper, which was sufficiently 
good when any visitor came ; at other times, 
it was spare. "We have tried to eat sup- 
pers," Miss Lamb writes to Mrs. Hazlitt, 
" but we left our appetites behind us ; and 
the dry loaf, which offended you, now comes 
in at night unaccompanied." You were sure 
of a welcome at his house ; sure of easy, un- 
fettered talk. After supper you might smoke 
a pipe with your host, or gossip (upon any 
subject) with him or his sensible sister. 

Perhaps the pipe was the only thing in 
which Lamb really exceeded. He was fond 



LOVE OF TOBACCO. 153 

of it from the very early years when he was 
accustomed to smoke " Orinooko " at the 
" Salutation and Cat," with Coleridge, in 
1796. He attempted on several occasions to 
give it up, but his struggles were overcome 
by counter influences. " Tobacco," he says, 
" stood in its own light.'.' At last, in 1S05, he 
was able to conquer and abandon it — for a 
time. His success, like desertion from a 
friend, caused some remorse and a great deal 
of regret. In writing to Coleridge about his 
house, which was " smoky," he inquires, 
"Have you cured it? It is hard to cure any-' 
thing of smoking." Apart from the mere 
pleasure of smoking, the narcotic soothed his 
nerves and controlled those perpetual appre- 
hensions which his sister's frequent illnesses 
excited. Of Mary Lamb, Hazlitt has said 
(somewhere) that she was the most rational 
and wisest woman whom he had ever known. 
Lamb and his sister had an open party once 
a week, every Wednesday evening, when his 



154 Hia LODGINGS. 

friends generally went to visit him, without 
any special invitation. He invited you sud- 
denly, not pressingly ; but with such hearti- 
ness that you at once agreed to come. There 
was usually a game at whist on these even- 
ings, in which the stakes were very moder- 
ate, indeed almost nominal. 

When my thoughts turn backward, as 
they sometimes do, to these past days, I see 
my dear old friend again, — "in my mind's 
eye, Horatio," — with his outstretched hand, 
and his grave, sweet smile of welcome. It 
w^s always in a room of moderate size, com- 
fortably but plainly furnished, that he lived. 
All old mahogany table was opened out in the 
middle of the room, round which, and near 
the walls, were old, high-backed chairs (such 
as our grandfathers used), and a long, plain 
bookcase completely filled with old books. 
These were his " ragged veterans." In one 
of his letters he says, " My rooms are luxuri- 
ous, one for prints, and one for books ; a 



HIS SISTER. 155 

summei* and winter parlor." They, however, 
were not otherwise decorated. I do not re- 
member ever to have seen a flower or an 
image in them. He had not been educated 
into expensive tastes. His extravagances were 
confined to books. These were all chosen 
by himself, all old, and all in " admired dis- 
order ; " yet he could lay his hand on any 
volume in a moment. " You never saw," he 
writes, " a bookcase in more true harmony 
with the contents than what I have nailed up 
in ray room. Though new, it has more apti- 
tude for growing old than you shall often see ; 
as one sometimes gets a friend in the middle 
of life who becomes an old friend in a short 
time." 

Here Charles Lamb sate, when at home, 
always near the table. At the opposite side 
was his sister, engaged in some domestic 
work, knitting or sewing, or poring over a 
modern novel. " Bridget in some things is 
behind her years." In fact, although she was 



156 HIS sisti:b. 

ten years older than her brother, she had 
more sympathy with modern books and with 
■youthful fancies than he had. She wore a 
neat cap, of the fashion of her youth ; an 
old-fashioned dress. Her face was pale and 
somewhat square, but very placid, with gray, 
intelligent eyes. She was very mild in her 
manner to strangers, and to her brother gen- 
tle and tender always. She had often an 
upward look, of peculiar meaning, when di- 
rected towards him, as though to give him 
assurance that all was then well with her. 
His affection for her was somewhat less on 
the surface, but always present. There was 
great gratitude intermingled with it. " In the 
days of weakling infancy," he writes, " I was 
her tender charge, as I have been her care 
in foolish manhood since." Then he adds, 
pathetically, " I wish I could throw into a 
heap the remainder of our joint existences, 
that we might share them in equal di- 
vision." 



COSTUME. 157 

Lamb himself was always dressed in black. 
" I take it," he says, " to be the proper cos- 
tume of an author." When this was once 
objected to, at a wedding, he pleaded the 
raven's apology in the fable, that " he had no 
other." His clothes were entirely black ; and 
he wore long black gaiters, up to the knees. 
His head was bent a little forward, like one 
who had been reading; and, if not standing 
or walking, he generally had in his hand 
an old book, a pinch of snuff, or, later in 
the evening, a pipe. He stammered a little, 
pleasantly, just enough to prevent his making 
speeches ; just enough to make you listen 
eagerly for his words, always full of meaning, 
or charged with a jest ; or referring (but this 
was I'are) to some line or passage from one 
of the old Elizabethan writers, which was 
always ushered in with a smile of tender rev- 
erence. When he read aloud it was with a 
slight tone, which I used to think he had 
caught from Coleridge ; Coleridge's recitation, 



158 BEADING ALOUD. 

however, rising to a chant. Lamb's reading 
was not generally in books of verse, but in 
the old lay writers, whose tendency was to- 
wards religious thoughts. He liked, however, 
religious verse. " I can read," he writes to 
Bernard Barton, " the homely old version of 
the Psalms in our prayer-books, for • an hour 
or two, without sense of weariness." He 
avoided manuscripts as much as practicable : 
" all things read raw to me in manuscript." 
Lamb wrote much, including many letters ; 
but his hands were wanting in pliancy (" in- 
veterate clumsiness" are his words), and his 
handwriting was therefore never good. It was 
neither text nor running hand, and the letters 
did not indicate any fluency ; it was not the 
handwriting of an old man nor of a young 
man; yet it had a very peculiar character — 
stiff, resolute, distinct ; quite unlike all others 
that I have seen, and easily distinguishable 
amongst a thousand. 

No one has described Lamb's manner or 



SENSIBILITY. 159 

merits so well as Hazlitt : " He always made 
the best pun and the best remark in the course 
of the evening. His serious conversation, like 
his serious writing, is his best. No one ever 
stammered out such fine piquant, deep, elo- 
quent things, in half a dozen sentences, as he 
does. His jests scald like tears ; and he probes 
a question with a play upon words. There 
was no fuss or cant about him. He has fur- 
nished many a text for Coleridge to preach 
upon." (/. Plahi Speaker?) Charles was 
frequently merry ; but ever, at the back of 
his merriment, there reposed a grave depth, 
in which rich colors and tender lights were 
inlaid. For his jests sprang from his sensi- 
bility ; which was as open to pleasure as to 
pain. This sensibility, if it somewhat impaired 
his vigor, led him into curious and delicate 
fancies, and taught him a liking for things of 
the highest relish, which a mere robust jester 
never tastes. 

Large, sounding words, unless embodying 



i6o TASTES AND OPINIONS. 

great thoughts (as in the case of Lear), he 
did not treasure up or repeat. He was an 
admirer of what was high and good, of what 
was delicate (especially) ; but he delighted 
most to saunter along the humbler regions, 
where kindness of heart and geniality of hu- 
mor made the way pleasant. His intellect 
was very quick, piercing into the recondite 
meaning of things in a moment. His own 
sentences were compressed and full of mean- 
ing ;■ his opinions independent and decisive ; 
no qualifying or doubting. His descriptions 
were not highly colored ; but, as it were, 
sharply cut, like a piece of marble, rather 
than like a picture. He liked and encouraged 
friendly discussion ; but he hated contentious 
argument, which leads to quarrel rather than 
to truth. 

There was an utter want of parade in every- 
thing he said and did, in everything about him 
and his home. • The only ornaments on his 
walls were a few engravings in black frames : 



TASTE 8 AND OPINIONS. . i6i 

one after Leonai'do da Vinci ; one after Titian ; 
and four, I think, by Hogarth, about whom he 
has written so well. Images of quaint beaut}^, 
and all gentle, simple things (things without 
pretension) pleased him to the fullest extent ; 
perhaps a little beyond their strict merit. I 
have heard him express admiration for Leo- 
nardo da Vinci that he did not accord to Raf- 
faelle. Raffaelle was too ostentatious of mean- 
ing ; his merits were too obvious, — too much 
thrust upon the understanding ; not retired nor 
involved, so as to need discovery or solution. 
He preferred even Titian (whose meaning is 
generally obvious enough) to Raffaelle ; but 
Leonardo was above both. Without doubt, 
Lamb's taste on several matters was peculiar ; 
for instance, there were a few obsolete words, 
such as arride, agnize., burgeon., &c., which 
he fancied, and chose to rescue from oblivion. 
Then he did not care for music. I never 
heard a song in his house, nor any conversa^ 
tion on the subject of melody or harmony. 



1 62 LONDON. 

"I have no ear," he says; yet the sentiment, 
apart from the science of music, gave him 
great pleasure. He reverenced the fine organ 
playing of Mr. Novello, and admired the soar- 
ing singing of his daughter, — " the tuneful 
daughter of a tuneful sire ; " but he resented 
the misapplication of the theatres to sacred 
music. He thought this a profanation of the 
good old original secular purposes of a play- 
house. 

As a comprehension of all delights he loved 
London ; -with its bustle and its living throngs 
of men and women ; its shops, its turns and 
windings ; the cries and noises of trade and 
life ; beyond all other things. He liked also 
old buildings and out-of-the-way places ; col- 
leges ; solemn churchyards, round which the 
murmuring thousands floated unheeding. In 
particular he was fond of visiting, in his short 
vacations, the Universities of Oxford and Cam- 
bx-idge. Although (he writes) " Mine have 
been anything but studious hours," he pro- 



LOVE OF BOOKS. 163 

fesses to have received great solace froin those 
" repositories of ' mouldering ' learning." " What 
a place to be in is an old library ! " he exclaims, 
" where the souls of the old vs^riters seem re- 
posing, as in soixie dormitory or middle state." 
The odor of the " moth-scented " coverings of 
the old books is "as fragrant as the blooms 
of the tree of knowledge which grew in the 
happy orchard." 

An ancient manor-house, that Vanbrugh 
might have built, dwelt like a picture in his 
memory. " Nothing fills a child's mind like 
an old mansion," he says. Yet he could feel 
unaffectedly the simplicity and beauty of a 
country life. The heartiness of country people 
went to his heart direct, and remained there 
forever. The Fields and the Gladmans, with 
their homely dwellings and hospitality, drew 
him to them like magnets. There was noth- 
ing too fine nor too lofty in these friends for 
his tastes or his affection ; they did not " affront 
him with their light." His fancy always 



164 MODESTY. 

stooped to moralize ; he hatted the stilted atti- 
tudes and pretensions of poetasters and self- 
glorifying artists. 

He never spoke disparagingly of any person, 
nor overpraised any one. When it was pro- 
posed to erect a statue of Clarkson, during 
his life, he objected to it : " We should be 
modest," he says, "for a modest man." He 
was himself eminently modest ; he never put 
himself forward : he was always sought. He 
had much to say on many subjects, and he 
was repeatedly pressed to say this, before he 
consented to do so. He was almost teased 
into writing the Elia Essays. These and all 
his other writings are brief and to the point. 
He did not exhale in words. It w^s said that 
Coleridge's talk was worth so many guineas a 
sheet. Charles Lamb talked but sparingly. 
He put forth only so much as had complete 
flavor. I know that high pay and frequent 
importunity failed to induce him to squander 
his strength in careless essays : he waited 



LETTER TO WORDSWORTH. 165 

until he eould give tliem their full share of 
meaning and humor. 

When I speak of his extreme liking for 
London, it must not be supposed that he was 
insensible to great scenery. After his only 
visit to the Lake country, and beholding Skid- 
daw^, he writes back to his host, " O ! its fine 
black head, and the bleak air at the top of 
it, with a prospect of mountains all about 
making you giddy. It was a day th^t will 
stand out like a mountain in my life ; " adding, 
however, " Fleet Street and the Strand are 
better places to live in, for good and all. I 
could not live in Skiddaw. I could spend 
there two or three years ; but I must have a 
prospect oft seeing Fleet Street at the end of 
that time, or I should mope and pine away." 
He loved even its smoke, and asserted that it 
suited his vision. A short time previously he 
had, in a touching letter to Wordsworth (1801), 
enumerated the objects that he liked so much 
in London. " These things," he writes, " work 



i66 LOVE OF BOOKS. 

• 

themselves into my mind : the rooms where I 
'w^as born ; a bookcase that has followed me 
about like a faithful dog (only exceeding him 
in .knowledge) wherever I have moved; old 
chairs ; old tables ; squares where I have 
sunned myself; my old school: these are my 
mistresses. Have I not enough, without your 
mountains ? I do not envy you ; I should pity 
you, did I not know that the mind will make 
friends v^ith anything." 

Besides his native London, "the centre of 
busy interests," he had great liking for unpre- 
tending men, who would come and gossip with 
him in a friendly, companionable way, or who 
liked to talk about old authors or old books. 
In his love of books he was ve%y catholic. 
" Shaftesbury is not too genteel, nor Jonathan 
Wild too low. But for books which are no 
books," such as " scientific treatises, and the 
histories of Hume, Smollett, and Gibbon," &c., 
he confesses that he becomes splenetic when 
he sees them perched up on shelves, " like false 



CHARITY. 167 

saints, who have usurped the true shrmes" of 
the legitimate occupants. He loved old books 
and authors, indeed, beyond most other things. 
He used to say (with Shakespeare), "The 
Heavens themselves are old." He would rather 
have acquired an ancient forgotten volume than 
a modern one, at an equal price ; the very cir- 
cumstance of its having been neglected and cast 
disdainTully into the refuse basket of a bookstall 
gave it value in his eyes. He bought it, and 
rejoiced in being able thus to remedy the injus- 
tice of fortune. - • 

He liked best those who had not thriven with 
posterity : his reverence for Margaret, Duchess 
of Newcastle, can only be explained in this way. 
It must not be forgotten that his pity or gen- 
eresity towards neglected authors extended also 
to all whom the goddess of Good Fortune had 
slighted. In this list were included all who had 
suffered in purse or in repute. He was ready 
to defend man or beast, whenever unjustly at- 
tacked. I remember that, at one of the monthly 



1 68 CHARITY. 

magazine dinners, when John Wilkes was too 
roughly handled, Lamb quoted the story (not 
generally known) of his replying, when the 
blackbirds were reported to have stolen all his 
cherries, " Poor birds, they are welcome." He 
said that those impulsive words showed the 
inner nature of the man more truly than all 
his political speeches. 

Lamb's charity extended to all things. I 
never heard him speak spitefully of any author. 
He thought that every one should have a clear 
stage, unobstructed. His heart, young at all 
times, never grew hard or callous during life. 
There was always in it a tender spot, which 
Time was unable to touch. He gave away 
greatly^ when the amount of his means are 
taken into consideration ; he gave away moi:iey 
— even annuities, I believe — to old impoverished 
friends whose wants were known to him. I 
remember that once, when we were sauntering 
together on Pentonville Hill, and he noticed 
great depression in me, which he attributed to 



CHARITY. 169 

want of money, he said, suddenly, in his stam- 
mering way, "My dear boy, I — I have a qvxan- 
tity of useless things. I have now — in my desk, 
a — a hundred pounds — that I don't — don't 
know what to do with. Take it." I was much 
touched ; but I assured him that my depression 
did not arise from w^ant of money. 

He was very home-loving ; he loved London 
as the best of places ; he loved his home as the 
dearest spot in London : it was the inmost heart 
of the sanctuary. Whilst at home he had no 
curiosity for what passed beyond his own terri- 
tory. His eyes were never truant ; no one ever 
saw him peering out of window, examining the 
crowds flowing by ; no one ever surprised him 
gazing on vacancy. " I lose myself," he says, 
" in other men's minds. When I am not walk- 
ing I am reading ; I cannot sit and think ; books 
think for me." If it was not the time for his 
pipe, it was always the time for an old play, 
or for a talk with friends. In the midst of this 
society his own mind grew green again and 



lyo HIS COMPANIONS. 

blossomed ; or, as he would have said, " bur- 
geoned." 

In the foregoing desultory account of Charles 
Lamb I have, vs^ithout doubt, set forth many 
things that are frequently held as trivial. Noth- 
ing, however, seems to me unimportant which 
serves in any way to illustrate a character. 
The floating straws, it is said, show from what 
quarter the wind is blowing. So the arching 
or knitting of the brow is sometimes sufficient 
to indicate wonder or pride, anger or contempt. 
On the stage, indeed, it is often the sole naeans 
of expressing the fluctuation of the passions. 
I myself have heard of a " Pooh ! " which in- 
terrupted a long intimacy, when the pander 
was administering sweet words in too liberal a 
measure. 

As with Lamb so with his companions. Each 
was notable for some individual mark or char- 
acter. His own words will best describe them : 
" Not inany persons of science, and few pro- 
fessed literati^ were of his councils. They were 



HIS COMPANIONS. 171 

for the most part persons of an uncertain for- 
tune. His intimados were, to confess a truth, 
in the world's eye, a ragged regiment ; he found 
them floating on the surface of society, and the 
color or something else in the weed pleased 
him. The burrs stuck to him ; but they were 
good and loving buiTs, for all that." 

None of Lamb's intimates were persons of 
title or fashion, or of any political importance. 
They were reading men, or authors, or old 
friends who had no name or pretensions. The 
only tie that held these last and Lamb together 
was a long-standing mutual friendship — a suffi- 
cient link. None of them ever forsook him : 
they loved him, and in return he had a strong 
regard for them. His affections, indeed, were 
concentrated on few persons ; not widened 
(weakened) by too general a philanthropy. 
When you went to Lamb's rooms on the 
Wednesday evenings (his "At Home"), you 
generally found the card table spread out, Lamb 
himself one of the players. On the corner of 



172 WEDNESDAY PARTIES. 

the table was a snuff-box ; and the game was 
enlivened by sundry brief ejaculations and pun- 
gent questions, which kept alive the wits of the 
party present. It was not " silent whist ! " I do 
not remember whether, in common with Sarah 
Battle, Lamb" had a weakness in favor of 
"Hearts." I suppose that it was at one of 
these meetings that he made that shrewd re- 
mark which has since escaped into notoriety : 
"Martin" (observed he), " if dirt were trumps, 
what a hand you would hold ! " It is not known 
what influence Martin's trumps had on the rub- 
ber then in jDrogress. — When the conversation 
became general, Lamb's part in it was very 
effective. His short, clear sentences always 
produced • effect. He never joined in talk un- 
less he understood the subject ; then, if the 
matter in question interested him, he was not 
slow in showing his earnestness ; but I never 
heard him argue or talk for argument's sake. 
If he was indifferent to the question, he was 
silent. 



EI8 COMPANIONS. ' 173 

The supper of cold meat, on these occasions, 
was always on the side-table ; not very formal, 
as may be imagined ; and every one might rise, 
when it suited him, and cut a slice or take a 
glass of porter, without reflecting on the absti- 
nence of the rest of the company. Lamb would, 
perhaps, call out and bid the hungry guest help 
himself without ceremony. We learn (from 
Hazlitt) that Martin Burney's eulogies on books 
were sometimes intermingled with expressions 
of his satisfaction with the veal pie which em- 
ployed him at the sideboard. After the game 
was won (and lost) the ring of the cheerful 
glasses announced that pvmch or brandy and 
water had become the order of the night. 

It was curious to observe the gradations in 
Lamb's manner to his various guests, although 
it was courteous to all. With Hazlitt he talked 
as though they met the subject in discussion on 
equal terms ; with Leigh Hunt he exchanged 
repartees ; to Wordsworth he was almost re- 
spectful ; with Coleridge he was sometimes 



174 ■ MABTIN BURNET. 

jocose, sometimes deferring ; with Martin Bur- 
ney fraternally familiar ; with Manning affec- 
tionate ; with Godwin merely courteous ; or, if 
friendly, then in a minor degree. The man 
whom I found at Lamb's house more frequently 
than any other person was Martin Burney. He 
is now scarcely known ; yet Lamb dedicated his 
prose works to him, in 1818, and there described 
him as " no common judge of books and men ; " 
and Southey, corresponding with Rickraan, 
when his "Joan of Arc" was being reprinted, 
says, " The best omen I have heard of its well- 
doing is, that Martin Burney likes it." Lamb 
was very much attached to Martin, who was a 
sincere and able man, although with a very 
unprepossessing physiognomy. His face w^as 
warped by paralysis, which affected one eye 
and one side of his mouth. He was plain 
and unaffected in manner, very diffident and 
retiring, yet pronouncing his opinions, when 
asked to do so, without apology or hesitation. 
He was a barrister, and travelled the western 



MARTIN BURNEY. 175 

circuit at the same time as Sir Thomas Wild 
(afterwards Lord Trm-o), whose briefs he used 
to read before the other considered them, mark- 
ing out the principal facts and points for atten- 
tion. Martin Burney had excellent taste in 
books ; eschewed the showy and artificial, and 
looked into the sterling qualities of writing. 
He frequently accompanied Lamb in his visits 
to friends, and although very familiar with 
Charles, he always spoke of him, with respect, 
as Afr. Lamb. " He is on the top scale of my 
friendship ladder," Lamb says, " on which an 
angel or two is still climbing, and some, alas ! 
descending." The last time I saw Burney was 
at the corner of a street in London, when he 
was overflowing on the subject of Raflaelle and 
Hogarth. After a great and prolonged struggle, 
he said, he had arrived at the conclusion that 
Raflaelle was the greater man of the two. 

Notwithstanding Lamb's somewhat humble 
description of his friends and familiars, some 
of them were men well known in literature. 



176 LAMB'S LITERARY FRIENDS. 

Amongst others, I met there Messrs. Cole- 
ridge, Manning, Hazlitt, Haydon, Wordsworth, 
Barron Field, Leigh Hunt,' Clarkson, Sheri- 
dan Knowles, Talfovird, Kenney, Godwin, the 
Burneys, Payne Collier, and others whose 
names I need not chronicle. .1 met there, 
also, on one or two occasions, Liston, and 
Miss Kelly, and, I believe, Rickman. Politics 
were rarely discussed amongst them. Anec- 
dotes, characteristic, showing the strong and 
weak points of human nature, were frequent 
enough. But politics (especially party poli- 
tics) were seldom admitted. Lamb disliked 
them as a theme for evening talk ; he per- 
haps did not understand the subject scientifi- 
cally. And when Hazlitt's impetuosity drove 
him, as it sometimes did, into fierce expres- 
sions on public affairs, these were usually re- 
ceived in silence ; and the matter thus raised up 
for assent or controversy was allowed to drop. 

Lamb's old associates are now dead. " They 
that lived so long," as he says, " and flour- 



SOCIAL PARTIES. 177 

ished so steadily, are all crumbled away," 
The beauty of these evenings was, that every 
one was placed upon an easy level. No one 
out-topped the others. No one — not even 
Coleridge — was permitted to out-talk the rest. 
No one was allowed to hector another, or to 
bring his own grievances too prominently for- 
ward, so as to disturb the harmony of the 
night. Every one had a right to speak, and 
to be heard ; and no one was ever trodden or 
clamored down (as in some large assemblies) 
until he had proved that he was not entitled 
to a hearing, or until he had abused his priv- 
ilege. I never, in all my life, heard so much 
unpretending good sense talked, as at Charles 
Lamb's social parties. Often a piece of spar- 
kling humor was shot out that illuminated the 
whole evening. Sometimes there was a flight 
of high and earnest talk, that took one half 
way towards the stars. 

It seems great matter for regret that the 
thoughts of men like Lamb's associates should 
12 



178 EEPBOBUCTION OF THOUGHTS. 

have passed away altogether ; for scarcely any 
of them, save Wordsw^orth and Coleridge, are 
nov\r distinctly remember-ed ; and it is, perhaps, 
not impossible to foretell the duration of i/iei'r 
fame. All have answ^fered their purpose, I 
suppose. Each has had his turn, and has 
given place to a younger thinker, as the 
father is replaced by the son. Thus Jeremy 
Taylor and Sir Thomas Bi-ow^ne, and Web- 
ster, and the old Dramatists, have travelled out 
of sight, and their thoughts are reproduced 
by modern writers, the originators of those 
thoughts often remaining unknown. Perhaps 
One, out of many thousand authors, survives 
into an immortality. The manner and the 
taste change. The armor and falchion of old 
give place to the new weapons of modern 
warfare — less weighty, but perhaps as trench- 
ant. We praise the old authors, but we do 
not read them. The Soul of Antiquity seems 
to survive only in its proverbs, which contain 
the very essence of wisdom. 



( 179 ) 



CHAPTER VI. 

London Magazine. — Contributors. — TranS' 
fer of Magazine. — MontJily Dimiers and 
Visitors. — Colehrook Cottage. — Lamb's 
Walks. — Essays of Elia : Their Excel- 
lence and Character. — Enlarged Acquaint- 
ance. — Visit to Paris. — Miss Isola. — 
^ttarrel with Southey. — Leaves Ljzdia 
House. — Leisure. — Amicus Redivivus. — 
Edward Irving. 

THE " London Magazine " was established 
in January, 1820, the publishers being 
Messrs. Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, and its 
editor being Mr. John Scott, who had formerly 
edited "The Champion" newspaper, and 
whose profession was exclusively that of a 
man of letters. At this distance of time it is 
impossible to specify the authors of all the va- 
rious papers which gave a tone to the Maga- 
zine ; but Ji3 this publication forms, in fact, 



i8o '^ LONDON MAGAZINE." 

the great foundation of Lamb's fame, I think it 
well to enter somewhat minutely into its con- 
stitution and character. 

Air. John Scott was the writer of the sev- 
eral articles entitled " The Living Authors ; " 
of a good many of the earlier criticisms ; of 
some of the papers on politics ; and of some 
which may be termed " Controversial." The 
essays on Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, 
Godwin, and Lord Byron are from his hand. 
He contributed also the critical papers on 
the writings of Keats, Shelley, Leigh Hunt, 
and Hazlitt. 

Mr. Hazlitt wrote all the articles which 
appear under the head " Drama ; " the twelve 
essays entitled " Table Talk ; " and the papers 
on Fonthill Abbey, and on the Angerstein 
pictures, and the Elgin marbles. 

Mr. Charles LamU's papers were the well- 
known Elia Essays, which first appeared in 
this Magazine. Mr. Elia (whose name he 
assumed) was, at one time, a clerk in the 



CONTBIBUTOBS TO MAGAZINE. i8i 

India House. He died, however, before the 
Essays were made public, and was ignorant 
of Lamb's intention to do honor to his name. 

Air. Thomas Carlyle was author of the 
" Life and Writings of Schiller," in the eighth, 
ninth, and tenth volumes of the Magazine. 
These papers, although very excellent, appear 
to be scarcely prophetic of the great fame 
which their author was afterwards destined, 
so justly, to achieve. 

Mr. De ^iiincey^s contributions were the 
" Confessions of an Opium Eater ; " also vari- 
ous papers specified as being " by the Opium 
Eater ; " the essay on Jean Paul Richter, and 
papers translated from the German, or dealing 
with German literature. 

The Reverend Henry Francis Cary (the 
translator of Dante) wrote the Notices of the 
Early French poets ; the additions to Orford's 
" Royal and Noble Authors ; " and, I believe, 
the continuations of Johnson's " Lives of the 
Poets." Of these last, however, I am not certain. 



i82 GONTBIBUTOBS TO MAGAZINE. 

Mr. Allan Cimnhtghatn (the Scottish poet) 
"vv^as author of the " Twelve Tales of Lyddal 
Cross ; " of the series of stories or papers styled 
" Traditional Literature ; " and of various other 
contributions in poetry and prose. 

Mr. yojin Poole contributed the " Beauties 
of the living Dramatists ; " being burlesque im- 
itations of modern wi'iters for the stage ; viz., 
Morton, Dibdin, Reynolds, MoncriefF, &c. 

Mr. yoJin Hamiltott Reynolds v^rote, I be- 
lieve, in every number of the periodical, after 
it came into the hands of Taylor and Hessey, 
who were his friends. All the papers with the 
name of Henry Herbert affixed were written by 
him ; also the descriptive accounts of the Coro- 
nation, Greenwich Hospital, The Cockpit Royal, 
The Trial of Thurtell, &c. 

Mr. TJiomas Hood fleshed his maiden sword 
here ; and his first poems of length, " Lycus the 
Centaur" and "The two Peacocks of Bedfont" 
inay be found in the Magazine. 

Mr. George Barley (author of " Thomas ^ 



GONTBIBUTORS TO MAGAZINE 183 

Becket," &c.) wrote the several papers entitled 
" Dramaticles ; " some pieces of verse ; and the 
Letters addressed to "The Dramatists of the 
Day." 

A£r. Richard Ay ton wrote " The Sea Roam- 
ers," the article on " Hunting," and such papers 
as are distinguished by the signature " R. A." 

Mr. Keats (the poet) and Mr. James Mont- 
gomery contributed verses. 

Sir John Bowring (I believe) translated into 
English verse the Spanish poetry, and wrote the 
several papers which appear under the head of 
" Spanish Romances." 

Mr. Henry Southern (editor of " The Retro- 
spective Review") wrote the " Conversations of 
Lord Byron," and " The Fanariotes of Constan- 
tinople," in the tenth volume. 

Mr. Walter Savage Landor was author of 
the Imaginary Conversation, between Southey 
and Porson, in volume eight. 

Mr. Julius (^Archdeacon) Hare reviewed the 
works of Landor in the tenth volume. 



184 CONTBIBUTOBB TO MAGAZINE. 

Mr. Elton contributed many translations from 
Greek and Latin authors ; from the minor poems 
of Homer, from Catullus, Nonnus, Propertius, &c. 

Messrs. Hartley Coleridge, John Clare, Cor- 
nelius Webb, Bernard Barton, and others sent 
poems ; generally with the indicating name. 

I myself was amongst the crowd of contribu- 
tors ; and was author of various pieces, some in 
verse, and others in prose, now under the pro- 
tection of that great Power which is called 
" Oblivion." 

Finally, the too celebrated Thomas Griffiths 
Wainewright contributed various fantasies, on 
Art and Arts ; all or most of which may be 
recognized by his assumed name of Janus 
Weathercock. 

To show the difficulty of specifying the au- 
thorship of all the articles contributed, — even 
Mr. Hessey (one of the proprietors) was unable 
to do so ; and indeed, shortly before his death, 
applied to me for information on the subject. 

By the aid of the gentlemen who contributed 



TRANSFER OF MAGAZINE. 185 

— each his quota — to the " London Magazine," 
it acquired much reputation, and a very consid- 
erable sale. During its career of five years, it 
had, *for a certain style of essay, no superior 
(scarcely an equal) amongst the periodicals of 
the day. It was perhaps not so widely popular 
as works directed to the multitude, instead of to 
the select few, might have been ; for thoughts 
and words addressed to the cultivated intellect 
only must always reckon upon limited success. 
Yet the Magazine was successful to an extent 
that preserved its proprietors from loss ; perhaps 
not greatly beyond that point. Readers in those 
years were insignificant in number, compared 
with readers of the present time, when almost 
all men are able to derive benefit from letters, 
and letters are placed within every one's reach. 
On the death of Mr. John Scott, the Magazine, 
in July, 1 82 1, passed into the hands of Messrs. 
Taylor and Hessey ; the former being the gen- 
tleman who discovered the identity of Junius 
with Sir Philip Francis; the latter being sim- 



i86 MANAGEMENT OF MAGAZINE. 

ply very courteous to all, and highly respectable 
and intelligent. 

John Scott was an able literary man. I do 
not remember much more of him than that he 
was a shrewd and I believe a conscientious 
writer ; that he had ' great industry ; was, gen- 
erally, well read, and possessed a very fair 
amount of critical taste ; that, like other per- 
sons, he had some prejudices, and that he was 
sometimes, moreover, a little hasty and irritable. 
Yet he agreed well, as far as I know, with the 
regiment of mercenai'ies who marched vmder 
his flag. 

When Taylor and Hessey assumed the man- 
agement of the "London Magazine" they en- 
gaged no editor. They were tolerably liberal 
paymasters ; the remuneration for each page of 
prose (not very laborious) being, if the writer 
were a person of repute or ability, one pound ; 
and for each page of verse, two pounds. 
Charles Lamb received (very iitly) for his 
brief and charming Essays, two or three times 



MONTHLY DINNERS. 187 

the amount of the other writers. When they 
purchased the Magazine, the proprietors opened 
a house in Waterloo Place for the better circu- 
lation of the publication. 

It was there that the contributors met once 
a month, over an excellent dinner given by the 
firm, and consulted and talked on literary mat- 
ters together. These meetings were very social, 
all the guests coming with a determination to 
please and to be pleased. I do not know that 
many important matters were arranged, for the 
welfare of the Magazine, at these dinners ; but 
the hearts of the contributors were opened, and 
with the expansion of the heart the intellect 
widened also. If there had been any shades 
of jealousy amongst them, they faded away 
before the light of the friendly carousal ; if there 
was any envy, it died. All the fences and re- 
straints of authorship were cast off, and the 
natural human being was disclosed. 

Amongst others, Charles Lainb came to most 
of these dinners, always dressed in black (his 



i88 GUESTS AT TEE FEASTS. 

old snuff-colored suit having been dismissed for 
years) ; always kind and genial ; conversational, 
not talkative, but quick in reply ; eating little, 
and drinking moderately with the rest. Allan 
Cunningham, a stalwart man, was generally 
there ; very Scotch in aspect, but ready to do a 
good turn to any one. His talk was not too 
abundant, although he was a voluminous writer 
in prose. His songs, not unworthy of being 
compared with even those of Burns, are (as 
everybody knows) excellent. His -face shone 
at these festivities. Reynolds came always. 
His good temper and vivacity were like con- 
diments at the feast. 

There also came, once or twice, the Rev. 
H. F. Gary, the quiet gentleness of whose 
face almost interfered with its real intelligence. 
Yet he spoke well, and with readiness, on any 
subject that he chose to discuss. He was very 
intimate with Lamb, who latterly often dined 
with him, and was always punctual. " By 
Cot's plessing we will not be absent at the 



. LAMB'S REGARD TOR OART. 189 

Grace" (he writes in 1834). Lamb's taste was 
very homely : he liked tripe and cow-heel, and 
once, when he was suggesting a particular dish 
to his friend, he wl'ote, " We were talking of 
roast shoulder of mutton and onion sauce ; but 
I scorn to prescribe hospitalities." Charles 
had great regard for Mr. Gary ; and in his 
last letter (written on his death-bed) he in- 
quired for a book, which he was very uneasy 
about, and which he thought he had left at 
Mrs. Dyer's. "It is Mr. Gary's book" (he 
says), " and I would not lose it for the world." 
Gary was entirely without vanity ; and he, 
who had traversed the ghastly regions of the 
Inferno, interchanged little courtesies on equal 
terms with workers who had never travelled 
beyond the pages of " The London Magazine." 
No one (it is said) who has performed any- 
thing great ever looks big upon it. 

Thomas Hood was there, almost silent ex- 
cept when he shot out some irresistible pun, 
and disturbed the gravity of the company. 



190 thOmab hood. 

Hood's labors were poetic, but his sjDorts were 
passerine. It is remarkable that he, who was 
capable of jesting even on his own prejudices 
and predilections, should not (like Catullus) 
have brought down the " Sparrow," and en- 
closed him in an ode. Lamb admired and 
was very familiar with him. " What a fertile 
genius he is ! " (Charles Lamb writes to Ber- 
nard Barton), "and quiet withal." He then 
expatiates particularly on Hood's sketch of 
" Very Deaf indeed ! " wherein a footpad has 
stopped an old gentleman, but cannot make 
him understand what he wants, although the 
fellow is faring a pistol into his ear trumpet. 
" You'd like him very much," he adds. Al- 
" though Lamb liked him very much, he was a 
little aiinoyed once by Hood writing a comical 
essay in imitation of (and so much like) one 
of his own, that people generally thought that 
Elia had awakened in an unruly mood. Haz- 
litt attended once or twice ; but he was a 
rather silent guest, rising into emphatic talk 



DE QUINOEY. 191 

only when some political discussion (very rare) 
stimulated him. 

Mr. De Quincey appeared at only one of 
these dinners. The expression of his face 
was intelligent, but cramped and somewhat 
peevish. He was self-involved, and did not ad-d 
to the cheerfulness of the meeting. I have con- 
sulted this gentleman's three essays, of which 
Charles Lamb is professedly the subject ; but I 
cannot derive from them anything illustrative 
of my friend Lamb's character. I have been 
mainly struck therein by De Quincey's attacks 
on Hazlitt, to whom the essays had no rela- 
tion. I am aware that the two authors (Haz- 
litt and De Qixincey) had a quarrel in 1823, 
Hazlitt having claimed certain theories or 
reasonings which th& other had propounded 
as his own. In reply to Mr. De Qiiincey's 
claims to have 'had a familiar acquaintance 
with Charles Lamb (in 1821 and 1823), I 
have to observe that during these years (when 
I was almost continually with him) I never 



192 GOLEBBOOE COTTAGE. 

saw Mr. De Quincey at his house, and never 
heard Lamb speak of him or refer to his writ- 
ings on any occasion. His visits to Lamb 
were surely very rare. 

yohn Clare, a peasant from Northampton- 
shire, and a better poet than Bloomfield, was 
one of the visitors. He was thoroughly rustic, 
dressed in conspicuously country fashion, and 
was as simple as a daisy. His delight at 
the wonders of London formed the staple of 
his talk. This was often stimulated into ex- 
travagance by the facetious fictions of Reynolds. 
Poor fellow, he died insane. 

About this time Lamb determined to leave 
London ; and in 1823 he moved Into Cole- 
brook Cottage, Islington, a small, detached 
white house of six rooms. " The New River, 
rather elderly by this time" (he says), "runs, 
if a moderate walking pace can be so termed, 
close to the foot of the house ; behind is a 
spacious garden, &c., and the cheerful dining- 
room is studded all over and rousrh with old 



LAMB'S WALKS. 193 

books : I feel like a great lord ; never having 
had a house before." 

Fi-om this place (which a friend of his 
christened " Petty Venice ") he used often to 
walk into London, to breakfast or dine with 
an acquaintance. For walking was always 
grateful to him. When confined to his room 
in the India House, he counted it amongst his 
principal recreations, and even now, with the 
whole world of leisure before him, it ranked 
amongst his daily enjoyments. By himself 
or with an acquaintance, and subsequently 
with Hood's dog Dash (whose name should 
have been Rover), he wandered over all the 
roads and by-paths of the adjoining country. 
He was a peripatetic, in every way, beyond 
the followers of Aristotle. Walking occupied 
his energies ; and when he returned home, he 
(like Sarah Battle) " unbent his mind over a 
book." "I cannot sit and think" is his phrase. 
If he now and then stopped for a minute at a 
^3 



194 LAMB'S WALKS. 

rustic public house, tired with the excursive 
caprices of Dash — beguiled perhaps by the 
simple attractions of a village sign — I hold 
him excusable for the glass of porter which 
sometimes invigorated him in his fatigue. 

In the course of these walks he traversed 
all the green regions which lie on the north 
and north-east of the metropolis. In London 
he loved to frequent those streets where the 
old bookshops were, Wardour Street, Princes 
Street, Seven Dials (where the shop has been 
long closed) : he loved also Gray's Inn, in the 
garden of which he met Dodd, just before his 
death ("with his buffoon mask taken off"); 
and the Temple, into v/hich you pass from 
the noise and crowd of Fleet Street, — into 
the quiet and " ample squares and green re- 
cesses," where the old Dial, " the garden god 
of Christian gardens," then told of Time, and 
where the still living fountain sends up its 
song into the listening air. 



"ELI A" ESSAYS. 195 

Of the Essays of " Elia," * written original- 
ly for the London Magazine, I feel it diffi- 
cult to speak. They are the best amongst 
the good — his best. I see that they are 
genial, delicate, terse, full of thought and full 
of humor ; that they are delightfully personal ; 
and when he speaks of himself you cannot 
hear too much ; that they are not imitations, 
but adoptions. We encounter his likings and 
fears, his fancies (his nature) in all. The 
words have an import never known before : 
the syllables have expanded their meaning, 
like opened flowers ; the goodness of others 
is heightened by his own tenderness ; and 
what is in nature hard and bad is qualified 
(qualified, not concealed) by the tender light 
of pity, which always intermingles with his 
own vision. Gravity and laughter, fact and 

* The first Essays of Elia were published by Taylor 
and Hessey under the title "Elia," in 1823. The 
second Essays were, together with the ' ' Popular Falla- 
cies," collected and published under the title of " The 
Last Essays of Elia," by Moxon, in 1833. 



196 MODESTY. 

fiction, are heaped together, leavened in each 
case by charity and toleration ; and all are 
marked by a wise humanity. Lamb's humor, 
I imagine, often reflected (sometimes, I hope, 
relieved) the load of pain that always weighed 
on his own heart. 

The first of the Essays (" The South Sea 
House ") appeared in the month of August, 
1820 ; the last' (" Captain Jackson ") in No- 
vember, 1824. Lamb's literary prosperity dur- 
ing this period was ^t the highest ; yet he 
was always loath to show himself too much 
before the world. After the first series of 
Essays had been published (for they are 
divided into two parts) he feigned that he 
was dead, and caused the second series to be 
printed as by " a friend of the late Elia." 
These were written somewhat reluctantly. 
His words are, " To say the truth, it is time 
he [Elia] were gone. The humor of the 
thing, if ever there were much humor in 
it, was pretty well exhausted ; and a two 



BEC0LLEQTI0N8 OF LAMB. 197 

years-and-a-half existence has been a tolerable 
duration for a phantom." It is thus modestly 
that he speaks of essays which have delighted 
all cultivated readers. 

I want a phrase to express the combination 
of qualities which constitutes Lamb's excel- 
lence in letters. In the absence of this, I 
must content myself with referring to some 
of the papers which live most distinctly in 
my recollection. I will not transcribe any 
part of his eulogy on Hogarth ; nor of his fine 
survey of " Lear," that grandest of all trage- 
dies. They are well known to students of 
books. I turn for a moment to the Elia Es- 
says only. In mere variety of subject (extent 
in a small space) they surpass almost all other 
essays. They are full of a witty melancholy. 
Many of them may be termed autobiographi- 
cal, which trebles their interest with most 
readers. 

Let me recollect : — How he mourns over 
the ruins of Blakesmoor (once his home on 



198 BEG0LLECTI0N8 OF LAIIB. 

holidays), "reduced to an antiquity" ! How he 
stalks, ghost-like, through the desolate rooms 
of the South Sea House, or treads the ave- 
nues of the Temple, where the benchers 
(" supposed to have been children once ") are 
pacing the stony terraces ! Then there is the 
inimitable Sarah Battle (unconquered even 
by Chance), arming herself for the war of 
whist; and the young Africans, "preaching 
from their chimney-pulpits lessons of patience 
to mankind." If your appetite is keen, by 
all means visit Bobo, who invented roast pig: 
if gay, and disposed to saunter through the 
pleasant lanes of Hertfordshire, go to Mackery 
End, where the Gladmans and Brutons will 
bid you welcome : if grave, let your eyes re- 
pose on the face of dear old Bridget Elia, " in 
a season of distress the truest comforter." 
Should you wish to enlarge your humanity, 
place a few coins (maravedis) in the palm 
of one of the beggars (the "blind Tobits") 
of London, and try to believe his tales, histo- 



"POPULAR FALLACIES." 199 

ries or fables, as though they were the veri- 
table stories (told by night) on the banks 
of the famous Tigris. Do not despise the 
poorest of the poor — even the writer of val- 
entines : " All valentines are not foolish," as 
you may read in Elia's words ; and " All 
fools' day" may cheer you, as the fool in 
" Lear " may make you wise and tolerant. 

I could go on for many pages — to the 
poor relations, and the old books, and the 
old actors ; to Dodd, who " dying put on 
the weeds of Dominic ; " and to Mrs. Jordan 
and Dickey Suet (both whom I well re- 
member) ; to Elliston, always on the stage ; 
to Munden, with features ever changing; 
and to Liston, with only one face : " But 
what a face ! " I forbear. I pass also over 
Comberbatch (Coleridge), borrower of books, 
and Captain Jackson, and Barbara S. (Miss 
Kelly), and go to the rest of my little history. 

The " Popular Fallacies," which in course 
of time followed, and were eventually added 



200 "POPULAR FALLACIES." 

to the second series and re-published, are in 
manner essays also on a small scale, brief 
and dealing with abstract subjects more than 
the " Elia." It may be interesting to know 
that Lamb's two favorites were " That home 
is home, though it is never so homely," and 
" That we should rise with the lark." In 
the fii'st of these he enters into all the dis- 
comforts and terrible distractions of a poor 
man's home ; in the second he descants on 
the luxuries of bed, and the nutritious value 
of dreams : " The busy part of mankind," 
he says, " are content to swallow their sleep 
by wholesale : we choose to linger in bed 
and digest our dreams." The last "Fallacy" 
is remarkable for a sentence which seems to 
refer to Alice W. : " We were never much 
in the world," he says; "disappointment 
early struck a dark veil between us and its 
dazzling illusions : " he then concludes with, 
"We once tl^ought life to be something; 
but it has unaccountably fallen from us be- 



LAMB'S STUDIES. 201 

fore its time. The sun has no purposes of 
ours to light us to. Why should we gel 



up 



?" 



It will be observed by the sagacious stu- 
dent of the entire Essays, that however quaint 
or familiar, or (rarely, however) sprinkled 
with classical allusions, they are never vul- 
gar, nor commonplace, nor pedantic. They 
are " natural with a self-pleasing quaintness." 
The phrases are not affected, but are de- 
rived from our ancestors, now gone to another 
country ; they are brought back from the 
land of shadows, and made denizens of Eng- 
land, in modern times. Lamb's studies were 
the lives and characters of men ; his humors 
and tragic meditations were generally dug 
out of his own heart: there are in them 
earnestness, and pity, and generosity, and 
truth ; and there Is not a mean or base 
thought to be found throughout all. 

In reading over these old essays, some of 
them affect me with a grave pleasure, amount- 



302 LAMB'S STUDIES. 

ing to •pain. I seem to import into them 
the very feeling with which he wrote them ; 
his looks and movements are transfigured, 
and communicated to me by the poor art 
of the printer. His voice, so sincere and 
earnest, rings in my ear again. He was no 
Feignwell : apart from his joke, never was a 
man so real, and free from pretence. No 
one, as I believe, will ever taste the flavor of 
certain writers as he has done. He was the 
last true lover of Antiquity. Although he 
admitted a few of the beauties of modern 
times, yet in his stronger love he soared back- 
wards to old acclivities, and loved to rest 
there. His essays, like his sonnets, are (as I 
have said) reflections of his own feelings. 
And so, I think, should essays generally be. 
. A history or sketch of science, or a logical 
effort, may help the reader some way up the 
ladder of learning; but they do not link 
themselves with his affections. I myself pre- 
fer the affections to the sciences. The story 



ENLARGED ACQUAINTANCE. 203 

of the heart is the deepest of all histories ; 
and Shakespeare is profounder and longer 
lived than Maclaurin, or Malthus, or Ricardo. 
Lamb's career throughout his later years was 
marked by an enlarged intercourse with society 
(it had never been confined to persons of his 
own way of thinking), by more frequent ab- 
sences in the country and elsewhere, and by 
the reception of a somewhat wider body of 
acquaintance into his own house. He visited 
the Universities, in which he much delighted : 
he fraternized with many of the contributors to 
the " London Magazine." He« received the let- 
ters and calls of his admirers — strangers _aiid 
others. These were now much extended in 
number, by the publication of the Essays of 
Elia. I was in the habit of seemg him very 
frequently at his home : I met him also at Mr. 
Gary's, at Leigh Hunt's, at Novello's, at Hay- 
don's, once at Hazlitt's, and elsewhere. It must 
haye been about this time that one of his visits 
(which always took place when the students 



204 VISIT TO OXFORD. 

were absent) was made to Oxford, where he 
met George Dyer, dreaming amongst the quad- 
rangles, as he has described in his pleasant paper 
called " Oxford in the Vacation." 

Lamb's letters to correspondents are perhaps 
not quite so frequent now as formerly. He 
writes occasionally to his old friends ; to Words- 
worth, and Southey, and Coleridge ; also to 
Manning, who is still in China, and to whom 
in December, 1815, he had sent one of his best 
and most characteristic letters, describing the 
(imaginary) death and decrepitude of his corre- 
spondent's friends in England ; although he takes 
care (the next day) to tell him that his first was 
a " lying letter." Indeed, that letter itself, hu- 
morous as it is, is so obviously manufactured 
in the fabulous district of hyperbole, that it 
requires no disavowal. Manning, however, re- 
turns to England not long afterwards ; and then 
the correspondence, if less humorous, is also 
less built up of improbabilities. He corresponds 
also with Mr. Barron Field, who is relegated 



VISIT TO PARIS. 205 

to the Judicial Bench in New South Wales. 
Of him he inquires about " The Land of 
Thieves ; " he wants to know if their poets be 
not plagiarists ; and suggests that half the truth 
which his letters contain " will be converted 
into lies " before they reach his correspondent. 
Mr. Field is the gentleman to whom the pleas- 
ant paper on " Distant Correspondents " is ad- 
dressed. 

In 1822 Charles Lamb and his sister travelled 
as far as Paris, neither of them understanding 
a word of the French language. What tempted 
them to undertake this expedition I never knew. 
Perhaps, as he formerly said, when journeying 
to the Lakes, it was merely a daring ambition 
to see " remote regions." The French jouraey 
seems to have been almost barren of good. He 
brought nothing back in his memory, and there 
is no account whatever of his adventures there. 
It has been stated that Mary Lamb was taken 
ill on the road ; but I do not know this with 
certauity. From a short letter to Barron Field, 



2o6 LETTER TO BABBON FIELD. 

it appears, indeed, that he thought Paris " a 
glorious picturesque old city," to which London 
looked " mean and new," although the former 
had " no Saint Paul's or Westminster Abbey." 
" I and sister," he writes, " are just returned 
from Paris. We have eaten frogs ! It has 
been such a treat ! Nicest little delicate things ; 
like Lilliputian rabbits. But this is all. His 
Reminiscences, whatever they were, do not en- 
rich his correspondence. In conversation he 
used to tell how he had once intended to ask the 
waiter for an egg (oeuf), but called, in his ig- 
norance, for Eau de vie, and that the mistake 
produced so pleasant a result, that his inquiries 
afterwards for Eau de vie were very frequent. 

In his travels to Cambridge, which began to 
be frequent about this time, his gains were 
greater. For there he first became acquainted 
with Miss Emma Isola, for whom, as I can 
testify, he at all times exhibited the greatest 
parental regard. When he and Mary Lamb first 
knew her, she was a little orphan girl, at school. 



MISS IS OLA. 207 

They invited her to spend her holidays with 
them ; and she went accordingly : the liking 
became mutual, and gradually deepened into 
great affection. The visit once made and so 
much relished, became habitual ; and Miss 
Isola's holidays were afterwards regularly spent 
at the Lambs' house. She used to take long 
walks with Charles, when his sister was too old 
and infirm to accompany him. Ultimately she 
was looked upon in the light of a child ; and 
Charles Lamb, when speaking of her (and he 
did this always tenderly), used invariably to 
call her " Our Emma." To show how deep 
his regard was, he at one time was invited to 
engage in some profitable engagement (1830) 
whilst Miss Isola was in bad health ; but he at 
once replied, " Whilst she is in danger, and till 
she is out of it, I feel that I have no spirits for 
an engagement of any kind." Some years after- 
wards, when she became well, and was about to 
be married, Lamb writes, " I am about to lose my 
only walk companion," whose mirthful spmts 



2o8 MISS IS OLA. 

(as he prettily terms it) were " the youth of our 
house." " With my perfect approval, and more 
than concurrence," as he states, she was to be 
married to Mr. Moxon. Miss Emma Isola, who 
was, in Charles Lamb's phrase, " a very dear 
friend of ours," remained his friend till death, 
and became eventually his principal legatee. 
After her marriage, Charles, writing to her 
husband (November, 1833), says, "Tell Emma 
I every day love her more, and miss her less. 
Tell her so, from her loving Uncle, as she has 
let me call myself." It was, as I believe, a very 
deep paternal affection. 

The particulars disclosed by the letters of 
1823 and 1824 are so generally unimportant, 
that it is unnecessary to refer to them. Lamb, 
indeed, became acquainted with the author of 
"Virginius" (Sheridan Knowles), with Mr. 
Macready, and with the writers in the " Lon- 
don Magazine " (which then had not been long 
established). And he appears gradually to dis- 
cover that his work at the India House is wea- 



LETTER TO W0BD8W0ETH. 209 

risome, and complains of it in bitter terms : 
" Thirty years have I served the Philistines " 
(he writes to Wordsw^orth), "and my neck is 
not subdued to the yoke." He confesses that 
he had once hoped to have a pension on " this 
side of absolute incapacity and infirmity," and 
to have walked out in the " fine Isaac Walton 
mornings, careless as a beggar, and walking, 
walking, and dying walking ; " but he says, " the 
hope is gone. I sit like Philomel all day (but 
not singing) , with my breast against this thorn 
of a desk." 

The character of his letters at this time is 
not generally lively ; there is, he says, " a 
certain deadness to everything, which I think 
I may date from poor John's (his brother's) 
loss. Deaths overset one. Then there's Cap- 
tain Burney gone. What fun has whist now?" 
He proceeds, " I am made up of queer points. 
My theory is to enjoy life ; but my practice 
is against it." The only hope he has, he 
says, is, "that some pulmonary affection may 
H 



2IO QUABBEL WITH SOUTHET. 

relieve me." The success which attended the 
" Elia " Essays did not comfort him, nor the 
(pecuniary) temptations of tlie bookseller to 
renew them. " The spirit of the thing in my 
own mind is gone" (he writes). "Some 
brains," as Ben Jonson says, " will endure but 
one skimmmg." Notwithstanding his melan- 
choly hvunor, however, there is Hope in the 
distance, which he does not see, and Freedom 
is not far off. 

It was during this period of Lamb's life 
(1833) that the quarrel between him and his 
old friend Robert Southey took place. Southey 
had long been (as was well known) one of the 
most constant and efficient contributors to the 
" Qtiarterly Review ; " and Lamb assigned to 
him the authorship of one of the Review ar- 
ticles, in which he himself was scantily com- 
plimented, and his friends Hazlitt and Leigh 
Hunt denounced. Sir T. Talfourd thinks that 
Mr. Southey was not the author of the offend- 
ing essay. Be that as it may, Lamb was then 



. LETTER TO SOUTHEY. 211 

of opinion that his old Tory friend was the 
enemy. In a letter to Bernard Barton (July, 
1823) he writes, " Southey has attacked ' Elia' 
on the score of infidelity. He might have 
spared an old friend. I hate his' Review, and 
his being a Reviewer ; " but he adds, " I love 
and respect Southey, and will not retort." 
However, in the end, irritated by the calumny, 
or (which is more probable) resenting compli- 
ments bestowed on himself at the expense of 
his friends, he sat down and penned his 
famous " Letter of Elia to Robert Southey, 
Esq.," which appeai"ed in the " London Mag- 
azine" for October, 1823, and which was 
afterwards published amongst his collected let- 
ters. 

This letter, I remember, produced a strong 
sensation in literary circles ; and Mr. South- 
ey's acquaintances smiled, and his enemies 
rejoiced at it. Indeed, the letter itself is a 
remarkable document. With much of Lamb's 
peculiar phraseology, it is argumentative, and 



212 INTIMACY WITH SOUTHEY RENEWED. 

defends the imaginary weaknesses or faults, 
against which (as he guesses) the "Q_uarterly" 
reproofs had been levelled. The occasion hav- 
ing gone by, this letter has been dismissed 
from most minds, except that part of it which 
exhibits Lamb's championship on behalf of 
Hunt and Ha.zlitt, and which is more touch- 
ing than anything to be found in controversial 
literature. 

Lamb's letter was unknown to his sister 
until after it appeared in the Magazine, it be- 
ing his practice to write his letters in Leaden- 
hall Street. It caused her a good deal of 
annoyance when she saw it in print. It is 
pleasant to think, however, that it was the 
means of restoring the old intimacy between 
Southey and Lamb, and also of strengthening 
the friendship between Lamb and Hazlitt, 
which some misunderstanding, at that time, 
had a little loosened. 

When I was married (October, 1824), Lamb 
sent me a congratulatory letter, which, as it was 



LETTER TO PROCTER. 213 

not published by Sir T. Talfourd, and is, more- 
over, characteristic, I insert here, from the MS. 

" My Dear Procter : I do agnize a 
shame in not having been to pay my congrat- 
ulations to Mrs. Pi'octer and your happy self; 
but on Sunday (my only morning) I was en- 
gaged to a country w^alk ; and in virtue of 
the hypostatical union between us, when Mary 
calls, it is understood that I call too, we being 
univocal. 

" But indeed I am ill at these ceremonious 
inductions. I fancy I was not born with a 
call on my head, though I have brought one 
down upon it with a vengeance. I love not to 
pluck that sort of frail crude, but to stay its 
ripening into visits. In probability Mary will 
be at Southampton Row this morning, and 
something of that kind be matured between 
you ; but in any case not many hours shall 
elapse before I shake you by the hand. 

" Meantime give my kindest felicitations to 



314 LETTER TO PROCTER. 

Mrs. Procter, and assure her I look forward 
with the greatest dehght to our acquaintance. 
By the way, the deuce a bit of cake has 
come to hand, which hath an inauspicious 
190k at first ; but I comfort myself that that 
Mysterious Service hath the property of Sac- 
ramental Bread, which mice _ cannot nibble, 
nor time moulder. 

"I am married myself — to a severe step- 
wife — who keeps me, not at bed and board, 
but at desk and board, and is jealous of my 
morning aberrations. I cannot slijD out to 
congratulate kinder unions. It is well she 
leaves me alone o' nights — the d — d Day-hag 
Business. She is even now peeping over me 
to see I am writing no Love Letters. I come, 
my dear — Where is the Indigo Sale Book? 

" Twenty adieus, my dear friends, till we 

meet. 

" Yours most truly, 

"C. Lamb. 
'-'' Leadenhall., Nov. 11th, '24." 



LEAVES INDIA HOUSE. 215 

The necessity for labor continued for some 
short time longer. - At last (in the beginning 
of the year 1S25) deliverance came. Charles 
had previously intimated his wish to resign. 
The Directors of the East India House call 
him into their private room, and after compli- 
menting him on his long and meritorious ser- 
vices, they suggest that his health does not 
appear to be good ; that a little ease is expe- 
dient at his time of life, and they then con- 
clude their conversation by suddenly intimat- 
ing their intention of granting him a pension, 
for his life, of two thirds of the amount of 
his salary ; "a magnificent offer," as he terms 
it. He is from that moment emancipated ; 
let loose from all ties of labor, free to fly 
v^heresoever he will. At the commencement 
of the talk Charles had had misgivings, for he 
was summoned into the " formidable back 
parlor," he says, and thought that the Direc- 
tors were about to intimate that they had no 
further occasion for his services. The whole 



2i6 ANNUITY. 

scene seems like one of the summer sunsets, 
jpreceded by threatenings of tempest, when the 
dark piles of clouds are separated and disap- 
pear, lost and swallowed by the radiance which 
fills the whole length and breadth of the sky, 
and looks as if it would be eternal. " I don't 
know what I answered," Lamb says, "between 
surprise and gratitude ; btit it was understood 
that I accepted their proposal, and I was told 
that I was free from that hour to leave their 
service. I stammered out a bow, and, at just 
ten minutes after eight, I went home — for- 
ever." 

At this time Lamb's salary was six hundred 
pounds per annum. The amount of two thirds 
of this sum, therefore, would be an annuity of 
four hundred pounds. But an annual provision 
was also made for his sister, in case she should 
survive him ; and this occasioned a small dim- 
inution. In exact figures, he was'to receive three 
hundred and ninety-one pounds a year during 
the remainder of his life, and then an annuity 



LEISURE. . 217 

was to become payable to Mary Lamb. His 
sensations, first of stupefaction, and afterwards 
of measureless delight, will be seen by reference 
to his exulting letters of this period. First he 
writes to Wordsworth of " the good that has 
befallen me." These are his words : " I came 
home — forever — on Tuesday last. The incom- 
prehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed 
me. It was like passing from Time into Eter- 
nity." * * * " Mary wakes every morning with 
an obscure feeling that some good has happened 
to us." — To Bernard Bai'ton his words are, "I 
have scarce steadiness of head to compose a let- 
ter. I am free, B. B. ; free as air. I will live 
another fifty years." * * « "Would I could 
sell you some of my leisure ! Positively the 
best thing a man can have to do is — Nothing : 
and next to that, perhaps. Good Works." — To 
Miss Hutchinson he writes, " I would not go 
back to my prison for seven years longer for 
ten thousand pounds a year. For some days I 
was staggered, and could not comprehend the 



2i8 "NOTHING TO DO." 

magnitude of my deliverance — was confused, 
giddy. But these giddy feelings have gone 
avray, and my weather-glass stands at a degree 
or two above ' Content.' All being holidays, 
I feel as if I had hone ; as they do in heaven, 
where 'tis all Red Letter days." 

Lamb's discharge or relief was timely and 
graciously bestowed. It opened a bright vista 
through which he beheld (in hope) many years 
of enjoyment ; scenes in which his spirit, res- 
cued from painful work, had only to disport 
itself in endless delights. He had well earned 
his discharge. He had labored without cessa- 
tion for thirty-three years ; had been diligent, 
and trusted — a laborer worthy of his hire. 
And the consciousness of this long and good 
service must have mingled with his reward and 
sweetened it. It is a great thing to have earned 
your meal — your rest, — whatever may be the 
payment in full for your deserts. You have not 
to force up gratitude from oblivious depths, day 
by day, for undeserved bounty. In Lamb's case 



"NOTHING TO DO." 219 

it happened, unfortunately, that the activity of 
mind which had procured his repose, tended 
afterwards to disquaHfy him from enjoying it. 
The leisure, that he had once reckoned on so 
much, exceeded, when it came, the pains of 
the old counting-house travail. It is only the 
imbecile, or those brought up in complete lazi- 
hood, who can encounter successfully the mo- 
notony of " nothing to do," and can slumber 
away their lives unharmed amongst the dumb 
weeds and flowers. 

In the course of a short time it appeared that 
he was unable to enjoy, so perfectly as he had 
anticipated, his golden time of " Nothing to do," 
his Liberia. .He therefore took long walks into 
the country. He also acquired the companion- 
ship of the large dog Dash, much given to 
wandering, to whose erratic propensities (Lamb 
walking at the rate of fourteen miles a day) he 
eventually became a slave. The ram.bling, in- 
constant dog rendered the clear, serene day of 
leisure almost turbid ; and he was ultimately 



220 FONDNESS FOB WALKING. 

(in order to preserve for Charles some little 
remaining enjoyment) bestowed upon another 
master. Lamb was always (as I have said) 
fond of walking, and he had some vague liking, 
I suppose, for free air and green pastures ; al- 
though he had no great relish specially for the 
flowers and ornaments of the country. I have 
often walked with him in the neighborhood of 
our great city ; and I do not think that he ever 
treasured up in his memory the violets (or other 
flowers), the songs of birds, or the pictures of 
sheep or kine dotting the meadows. Neither 
his conversation nor writings afforded evidence 
that he had done so. It is not easy, therefore, 
to determine what the special attractions were 
that drew him out of London, which he loved, 
into the adjoining country, where his walks 
oftenest lay. 

At the time of Lamb's deliverance from office 
labor, he was living in Colebrook Row. It was 
there that George Dyer, whose blindness and 
absence of mind rendered it almost dangrerous 



DTEB. 221 

for him to wander unaccompanied about the 
suburbs of London, came to visit him on one 
occasion. By accident, instead of entering the 
house door, Dyer's aqueous instincts led him 
towards the water, and in a moment he had 
plunged overhead in the New River. I hap- 
pened to go to Lamb's house, about an hour 
after his rescue and restoration to dry land, and 
met Miss Lamb in the passage, in a state of 
great alarm : she was whunpering, and could 
only utter, " Poor Mr. Dyer ! Poor Mr. Dyer ! " 
in treinulous tones. I went up stairs, aghast, 
and found that the involuntary diver had been 
placed in bed, and that Miss Lamb had admin- 
istered brandy and water, as a well-established 
preventive against cold. Dyer, unaccustomed 
to anything stronger than the " crystal spring," 
was sitting upright in the bed, perfectly deliri- 
ous. His hair had been rubbed up, and stood 
out like so many needles of iron gray. He did 
not (like FalstafF) " babble of green fields," but 
of the " watery Neptune." " I soon found out 



222 '' AMICUS EEDIVIVUB." 

where I was," he cried out to me, laughing; 
and then he went wandering on, his words 
taking flight into regions where no one could 
follow. Charles Lamb has commemorated this 
immersion of his old friend, in his (Elia) essay 
of " Amicus Redivivus." 

In the summer of 1826 Lamb published, in 
" Blackwood's Magazine," a little drama in one 
act, entitled "The Wife's Trial." It was 
founded on Crabbe's poetical tale of " The 
Confidant ; " and contains the germ of a plot, 
which undoubtedly might have been worked out 
with more effect, if Lamb had devoted sufficient 
labor to that object. 

. Amongst the remarkable persons whom 
Charles became acquainted with, in these 
years, was Edward Irving. Lamb used to 
meet him at Coleridge's house at Highgate, 
and elsewhere ; and he came to the conclusion 
that he was (as indeed he was) a fine, sin- 
cere, spirited man, terribly slandered. Edward 
Irving, who issued, like a sudden light, from 



IRVINO. . 223 

the obscure little town of Annan, in Scotland, 
acquired, in the year 1822, a wide reputation 
in London. He was a minister of the Scotch 
Church, and before he came to England had 
acted as an assistant preacher to Dr. Chal- 
mers. In one of Charles's letters (in 1835) 
to Bernard Barton (who had evidently been 
measuring Irving by a low Qiiaker standard), 
he takes the opportunity of speaking of the 
great respect that he entertained for the Scotch 
minister. " Let me adjure you " (writes 
Charles), "have no doubt of Irving. Let 

Mr. [?] drop his disrespect." "Irving 

has prefixed a dedication, of a missionary 
character, to Coleridge — most beautiful, cor- 
dial, and sincere. He there acknowledges 
his obligations to S. T. C, at whose Gama- 
liel feet he sits weekly, rather than to all 
men living." Again he writes, " Some friend 
said to Irving, ' This will do you no good ' 
(no good in worldly repute). ''That is a 
reason for doing it,' quoth Irving. . I am 



224 IRVING. 

thoroughly pleased with him. He is firm, 
out-speaking, intrepid, and docile as a pupil 
of Pythagoras." In April, 1825, Lamb writes 
to Wordsworth to the same effect. " Have 
you read the noble dedication of Irving's 
Missionary Sermons ? " he inquires ; and then 
he repeats Irving's fine answer to the sug- 
gested impolicy of publishing his book with 
its sincere prefix. 

Poor Edward Irving ! whom I always deeply 
respected, and knew intimately for some 
years, and who was one of the best and 
truest men whom it has been my good for- 
tune to meet in life ! He entered London 
amidst the shouts of his admirers, and he de- 
parted in the midst of contumely ; sick, and 
sad, and maligned, and misunderstood ; going 
back to his dear native Scotland only to die. 
The time has long passed for discussing the 
truths or errors of Edward Irving's peculiar 
creed ; but there can be no doubt that he 
himself was true and faithful till death, and 



IRVING. 225 

that he preached only what he entirely be- 
lieved. And what can man do more? If he 
was wrong, his errors arose from his extreme 
modesty, his extreme veneration for the sub- 
. ject to which he raised his thoughts. 

In the last year of Edward Irving's life 
(1834), he was counselled by his physician 
to pass the next winter in a milder climate — 
that " it was the only safe thing for him." 
Prevented from ministering in his own church, 
where " he had become an embarrassment," 
he travels into the rural places, subdued and 
chastened by his weakness, — to the Wye 
and the Severn — to the fine mountains and 
pleasant places of Wales. Sometimes he 
thinks himself better. He quits London (for- 
evei") in the early part of September, and on 
the 23d of that month he writes to his wife 
that he is " surely better, for his pulse has 
come to be tmder 100." He passes by Cader 
Idris, and Snowdon — by Bedgclert to Ban- 
gor, " a place of repose ; " but gets wet whilst 
15 



226 IBVING. 

viewing the Menai Bridge, and had " a fevered 
night ; " yet he is able to droop on to Liver- 
pool. Thence (the love of his native land 
drawing him on) he goes northwards, instead 
of to the south. He reaches Glasgow, where 
" he thinks of organizing a church ; " although 
Dr. Darling " decidedly says that he cannot 
humanly live over the winter." Yet he still 
goes on with his holy task ; he writes " pasto- 
ral letters," and preaches, and prays, and 
offers kind advice. His friends, from Kirk- 
caldy and elsewhere, come to see him, where, 
" for a few weeks still, he is visible, about 
Glasgow. In the sunshine — in a lonely street, 
his gaunt, gigantic figure rises feebly against 
the light." At last he lies down on " the bed 
from which he is never to rise ; " his mind 
wanders, and his articulation becomes indis- 
tinct ; but he is occasionally understood, and 
is heard murmuring (in Hebrew) parts of 
the 23d Psalm, " The Lord is my Shepherd : 
He leadeth me beside the still waters." And 



IRVING. 227 

thus gradually sinking, at the close of a 
gloomy Sunday night in December, he dies. 

Mr. Thomas Carlyle, his friend (the friend 
of his youth), has written an eloquent epi- 
taph upon him ; not partial, for they differed 
in opinion — but eloquent, and very touching. 
I read it over once or twice in every year. 
Edward Irving's last words, according to his 
statement, were, " In life and in death I am 
the Lord's." Carlyle then adds, " But for 
Irving, I had never known what the com- 
munion of man with man means. He was 
the freest, brotherliest, bravest human soul 
mine ever came in contact with ; the best man 
I have ever (after trial enough) found in this 
world, or now hope to find." 

So Edward Irving went to the true and 
brave enthusiasts who have gone before him. 
He died on his final Sabbath (7th December, 
1834), ^^^ ^^^^ the world and all its troubles 
behind him. 



( 228 ) 



CHAPTER VII. 

Specimen of JLamFs Humor. — Death oj" 
Mr. Nor r is. — Gar rick Plays. — Letters to 
Barton. — Opinions on Books. — Breakfast 
with Mr. N. P. Willis. — Moves to En- 
Jield. — Caricature of Lamb. — Albtuns and 
Acrostics. — '■ Pains of Leistire. — The Bar- 
ton Correspondence. — Death of Hazlitt. 

— Mttnden^s Acting and Quitting" the 
Stage. — Lamb becomes a Boarder. — 
Moves to Edmo7tton. — Metropolitan At- 
tachjnents. — Death of Coleridge. — LamVs 
Fall and Death. — Death of Mary Lamb. 

— POSTS CRLPT. 

"ITH the expiration of the " London 
Magazine," Lamb's literary career 
terminated. A few trifling contributions to 
the " New Monthly," and other periodicals, 
are scarcely sufficient to qualify this statement. 
It may be convenient, in this place, to 
specify some of those examples of humor 



LAMB'S HUMOR. 329 

and of jocose speech for which Charles 
Lamb in his lifetime was well known. These 
(not his best thoughts) can be separated 
from the rest, and may attract the notice of 
the reader, here and there, and relieve the 
tameness of a not very eventful narrative. 

It is possible to define wit (which, as Mr. 
Coleridge says, is "impersonal"), and hu- 
mor also ; but it is not easy to distinguish 
the humor of one man from that of all other 
humorists, so as to bring his special quality 
clearly before the apprehension of the reader. 
Perhaps the best (if not the most scientific) 
way might be to produce specimens of each. 
In Charles Lamb's case, instances of his humor 
are to be found in his essays, in his sayings 
(already partially reported), and throughout 
his letters, where they are very frequent. 
They are often of the composite order, in 
which humor, and wit, and (sometimes) pathos 
are intermingled. Sometimes they merely ex- 
hibit the character of the man. 



230 LAMB'S SAYINGS. 

He once said of himself that his biography 
" would go into an epigram." His sayings 
require gi^eater space. Some of those which 
have been circulated are apocryphal. The 
following are taken chiefly from his letters, 
and from my own recollections. 

In his exultation on being released from his 
thirty-four years of labor at the India House, 
he says, " Had I a little son, I would christen 
him ' Nothing to do.' " (This is in the " Su- 
perannuated Man.") 

Speaking of Don Quixote, he calls him " the 
errant Star of Knighthood, made more tender 
by eclipse." 

On being asked by a schoolmistress for some 
sign indicative of her calling, he recommended 
" The Murder of the Innocents." 

I once said something in his presence 
which I thought possessed smartness. He 
commended me with a stammer: "Very well, 
my dear boy, very well ; Ben (taking a pinch 



LAMB'S SAYINGS. 231 

of snufF), Ben Jonson has said worse things 
than that — and b — ^b — ^better." * 

His young chimney-sweepers, " from their 
little pulpits (the tops of chimneys) in the 
nipping air of a December morning, preach a 
lesson of patience to mankind." 

His saying to Martin Burney has been 
often repeated — " O Martin, if dirt were 
trumps, what a hand you would hold ! " 

To Coleridge : " Bless you, old sophist, who 
next to human nature taught me all the cor- 
ruption I was capable of knowing." 

To Mr. Gilman, a surgeon (" query Kill- 
man?"), he writes, "Coleridge is very bad, 
but he wonderfully picks up, and his face, 
when he repeats his verses, hath its ancient 
glory — an archangel a little damaged." 

To Wordsworth (who was superfluously 
solemn) he writes, " Some d — d people have 

* This, -with a small variation, is given in Mr. Thomas 
Moore's autobiography. I suppose I must have repeated 
it to him, and that he forgot the precise words. 



232 LAMB'S SAYINGS. 

come in, and I must finish abruptly. By 
d — d, I only mean deuced." 

The second son of George the Second, it 
was said, had a very cold and ungenial man- 
ner. Laixib stammered out in his defence 
that " this was very natural in the Duke of 
Cu-Cum-ber-land." 

To Bernard Barton, of a person of repute : 
" There must be something in him. Such 
great names imply greatness. Which of us 
has seen Michael Angelo's things? yet which 
of us disbelieves his greatness?" 

To Mrs. H., of a person eccentric : " Why 
does not his guardian angel look to him? He 
deserves one — may be he has tired him out." 

" Charles," said Coleridge to Lamb, " I think 
you have heard me preach?" "I n — n — never 
heard you do anything else," replied Lamb. 

One evening Coleridge had consumed the 
whole time in talking of some " regenerated " 
orthodoxy. Leigh Hunt, who was one of the 
listeners, on leaving the house, expressed his 



LAMB'S SAYINGS. 233 

surprise at the prodigality and intensity of 
Coleridge's religious expressions. Lamb tran- 
quillized him by " Ne — ne — never mind what 
Coleridge says ; he's full of fun." 

There were, &c., &c., " and at the top of 
all, Hunger (eldest, strongest of the Passions), 
predominant, breaking down the stony fences 
of shame." 

The Bank, the India House, and other rich 
traders look insultingly on the old deserted 
South Sea House, as on " their poor neighbor 
out of business." 

To a Frenchman, setting up Voltaire's char- 
acter in opposition to that of Christ, Lamb 
asserted that " Voltaire was a very good Je- 
sus Christ — Jvr tJie French" 

Of a Scotchman : " His understanding is 
always at its meridian. Between the affirma- 
tive and the negative there is no border land 
with him. You cannot hover with him on 
the confines of truth." 

On a book of Coleridge's nephew he writes. 



234 LAMB'S SAYINGS. 

" I confess he has more of the Sterne about 
him than the Sternhold. But he saddens into 
excellent sense before the conclusion." 

As to a monument being erected for Clark- 
son, in his lifetime, he opposes it, and argues, 
" Goodness blows no trumpet, nor desires to 
have it blown. We should be modest for a 
modest man." 

"M. B. is on the top scale of my friend- 
ship's ladder, which an angel or two is still 
climbing ; and some, alas ! descending." 

A fine sonnet of his (The Gipsy's Malison) 
being refused publication, he exclaimed, " Hang 
the age ! I will write for Antiquity." 

Once, whilst waiting in the Highgate stage, 
a woman came to the door, and inquired in a 
stern voice, "Are you quite full inside?" 
" Yes, ma'am," said Charles, in meek reply, 
"quite; that plateful of Mrs. Gilman's pud- 
ding has quite filled us." 

Mrs. K., after expressing her love for her 
young children, added, tenderly, " And how 



LAMB'S SAYINGS. 235 

do yozi like babies, Mr. Lamb?" His answer, 
immediate, almost precipitate, was " Boi-boi- 
boiled, ma'am." 

Hood, tempting Lamb to dine with him, 
said, " We have a hare." " And many- 
friends ? " inquired Lamb. 

It being suggested that he would not sit 
down to a meal with the Italian witnesses at 
the Queen's trial. Lamb rejected the imputa- 
tion, asserting that he would sit with anything 
except a hen or a tailor. 

Of a man too pi"odigal of lampoons and 
verbal jokes, Lamb said, threateningly, " I'll 
Lamb-pun him." 

On two Prussians of the same name being 
accused of the same crime, it was remarked 
as curious that they were not in any way 
related to each other. " A mistake," said he ; 
" they are cozens german." 

An old lady, fond of her dissenting minister, 
wearied Lamb by the length of her praises. " I 
speak, because I k7zow him well," said she. 



336 LAMB'S PUNS. 

"Well, I don't;" replied Lamb; "I don't; 
but d n him, at a ' venture.' " 

The Scotch, whom he did not like, ought, 
he said, to have double punishment ; and to 
have fire without brimstone. 

Southey, in 1799? showed him a dull poem 
on a rose. Lamb's criticism was, " Your rose 
is insipid : it has neither thorns nor sweetness." 

A person sending an unnecessarily large sum 
with a lawyer's brief. Lamb said " it was ' a fee 
simple.' " 

Mr. H. C. Robinson, just called to the bar, 
tells him, exultingly, that he is retained in a 
cause in the King's Bench. " Ah " (said Lamb), 
" the great first cause, least understood." 

Of a pun. Lamb says it is a " noble thing 
per se. It is entire. It fills the mind ; it is as 
perfect as a sonnet ; better. It limps ashamed, 
in the train and retinue of humor." * 

* I fear that I have not, in all the foregoing instances, 
set forth with sufficient precision the grounds or premises 
upon which the jests were founded. There were, more- 
over, various other sayings of Lamb, which do not come 



LAMB'S PUNS. 237 

Lamb's puns, as far as I recollect, were not 
frequent ; and, except in the case of a pun, it is 
difficult to divest a good saying of the facts sur- 
rounding it without impoverishing the saying 

into the above catalogue; as where — when enjoying a 
pipe with Dr. Parr, that Divine inquired how he came to 
acquire the love of smoking so much, he replied, " I toiled 
after it as some people do after virtue." — When Godwin 
was expatiating on the benefit of unlimited freedom of 
thought, especially in matters of religion. Lamb, who did 
not like this, interrupted him by humming the little child's 
song of " Old Father Longlegs won't say his prayers," 
adding, violently, " Throw him down stairs ! " — He con- 
soles Mr. Crabbe Robinson, suffering under tedious rheu- 
matism, by writing, " Your doctor seems to keep you under 
the long cure." — To Wordsworth, in order to explain that 
his friend A was in good health, he writes, " A is well ; he 
is proof against weather, ingratitude, meat underdone, and 
every weapon of fate." The story of Lamb replying to 
some one, who insisted very strenuously on some uninter- 
esting circumstances being " a, matter of fact," by saying 
that he was " a matter of lie " man, is like Leigh Hunt, who, 
in opposing the frequent confessions of "I'm in love," as- 
serted, in a series of verses, that he was " In hate." — 
Charles hated noise, and fuss, and fine words, but never 
hated any person. Once, when he had said, "I hate Z," 
some one present remonstrated with him : " Why, you have 
never seen him." "No," replied Lamb, "certainly not; I 
never could hate any man that I have once seen." — Being 



238 LAMB' 8 PUNS. 

itself. Lamb's humor is generally imbedded in 
the surrounding sense, and cannot often be dis- 
elitangled without injury. 

I have said that the proprietorship of the 

asked how he felt when amongst the lakes and mountains 
of Cumberland, he replied that he was obliged to think of 
the Ham and Beef shop near Saint Martin's Lane ; this was 
in order to bring down his thoughts from their almost too 
painful elevation to the sober regions of every-day life. 

In the foregoing little history, I have set forth such facts 
as tend, in my opinion, to illustrate my friend's character. 
One anecdote I have omitted, and it should not be forgotten. 
Lamb, one day, encountered a small urchin loaded with a 
too heavy package of grocery. It caused him to tremble and 
stop. Charles inquired where he was going, took (although 
weak) the load upon his own shoulder, and managed to 
carry it to Islington, the place of destination. Finding that 
the purchaser of the grocery was a female, he went with 
the urchin before her, and expressed a hope that she would 
intercede with the poor boy's master, in order to prevent 
his being overweighted in future. " Sir," said the dame, 
after the manner of Tisiphone, frowning upon him, "I buy 
my sugar, and have nothing to do with the man's manner of 
sending it." Lamb at once perceived the character of the 
purchaser, and taking off his hat, said, humbly, "Then I 
hope, ma'am, you'll give me a drink of small beer." This 
was of course refused. He afterwards called upon the 
grocer, on the boy's behalf — with what eiFect I do not 
know. 



DEATH OF MB. N ORRIS. 239 

" London Magazine," in the year 1821, became 
vested in Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, under 
whom it became a social centre for the ineeting 
of many literary men. The publication, how- 
ever, seems to have interfered with the ordinary 
calling of the booksellers ; and the sale was not 
therefore (I suppose) sufficiently important to 
remunerate them for the disturbance of their 
general trade. At all events, it was sold to Mr. 
Henry Southern, the editor of " The Retrospec- 
tive Review," at the expiration of 1825, after 
having been in existence during five entire 
years. In Mr. Southern's hands, under a dif- 
ferent system of management, it speedily ceased. 
In 1826 (January) Charles Lamb suffered 
great grief from the loss of a very old friend, 
Mr. Norris. It may be remembered that he 
was one of the two persons who went to com- 
fort Lamb when his mother so suddenly died. 
Mr. Norris had been one of the officers of the 
Inner Temple or Christ's Hospital, and had 
been intimate with the Lambs for many years ; 



240 THE OABBICK PLAYS. 

and Charles, when young, used always to spend 
his Christmases with him, " He was my friend 
and my father's friend," Lamb writes, " all the 
life I can remember. I seem to have made 
foolish friendships ever since. Old as I am, 
in his eyes I was still the child he first knew 
me. To the last he called me ' Charley.' I 
have none to call me Charley now. He was 
the last link that bound me to the Temple." 

It was after his death that Lamb once more 
resorted to the Bi'itish Museum, which he had 
been in the habit of frequenting formerly, when 
his first " Dramatic Specimens" were published. 
Now he went there to make other extracts from 
the old plays. These were entitled " The Gar- 
rick Plays," and were bestowed upon Mr. Hone, 
who was poor, and were by him published in 
his " Every Day Book." Subsequently they 
were collected by Charles himself, and formed 
a supplement to the earlier " Specimens." 
Lamb's labors in this task were by no means 
trivial. " I am now going through a course of 



LETTER TO BARTON. 241 

reading" (of old plays), he writes; "I have 
two thousand to go through." 

Lamb's correspondence with his Quaker 
friend, Bernard Barton (" the busy B," as 
Hood called him), whose knowledge of the 
English drama was confined to Shakespeare 
and Miss Baillie, went on constantly. His let- 
ters to this gentleman comprised a variety of 
subjects, on most of which Charles offers him 
good advice. Sometimes they are less personal, 
as where he tells him that " six hundred have 
been sold of Hood's book, while Sion's songs 
do not disperse so quickly ; " and where he 
enters (very ably) into the defects and merits 
of Martin's pictures, Belshazzar and Joshua, 
and ventures an opinion as to what Art should 
and should not be. He is strenuous in advis- 
ing him not to forsake the Bank (where he is 
a clerk), and throw himself on what the chance 
of employ by booksellers would afford. " Throw 
yourself, rather, from the steep Tarpeian rock, 
headlong upon the iron spikes. Keep to your 
16 



342 OPINIONS ON BOOKS. 

bank, and your bank will keep you. Trust not 
to the Public," he says. Then, referring to his 
own previous complaints of official toil, he adds, 
" I retract all my fond complaints. Look on 
them as lovers' quarrels. I was but half in 
earnest. Welcome, dead timber of a desk that 
gives me life. A little grumbling is wholesome 
for the spleen ; but in my inner heart I do ap- 
prove and embrace this our close but unharass- 
ing wa}^ of life." 

Lamb's opinions on books, as well as on con- 
duct, making some deduction for his preference 
of old writers, is almost always sound. When 
he is writing to Mr. Walter Wilson, who is 
editing De Foe, he says of the famous author 
of "Robinson Crusoe," — 

" In appearance of truth his works exceed 
any works of fiction that I am acquainted with. 
It is perfect illusion. It is like reading evi- 
dence in a court of justice. There is all the 
minute detail of a log-book in it. Facts are 
repeated in varying phrases till you cannot 



OPINIONS ON BOOKS. 243 

choose but believe them." His liking for books 
(rather than his criticism on them) is shown 
frequently in his letters. " O ! to forget Field- 
ing, Steele, &c., and to read 'em new" he says. 
Of De Foe, " His style is everywhere beautiful, 
but plain and homely." Again, he speaks of 
"Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, — great Nature's 
stereotypes." "Milton," he says, "almost re- 
quires a solemn service of music to be played 
before you enter upon him." Of Shenstone he 
speaks as " the dear author of the Schoolmis- 
tress ; " and so on from time to time, as occasion 
prompts, of Bunyan, Isaac Walton, and Jeremy 
Taylor, and Fuller, and Sir Philip Sidney, and 
others, in affectionate terms. These always re- 
late to English authors. Lramb, although a 
good Latinist, had not much of tliat which 
ordinarily passes under the name of Learning. 
He had little knowledge of languages, living 
or dead. Of French, German, Italian, &c., he 
knew nothing ; and in Greek his acquirements 
were very moderate. These children of the 



244 BREAKFAST WITH MB. WILLIS. 

tongues were never adopted by him ; but in his 
own Saxon English he was a competent scholar, 
a lover, nice, discriminative, and critical. 

The most graphic account of Lamb at a 
somewhat later period of his life appears in 
Mr. N. P. Willis's " Pencillings by the Way." 
He had been invited by a gentleman in the 

Temple, Mr. R (Robinson?), to meet 

Charles Lamb and his sister at breakfast. 
The Lambs lived at that time " a little way 
out of London, and were not quite punctual. 
At last they enter — "the gentleman in black 
small-clothes and gaiters, short and veiy 
slight in person, his head set on his shoul- 
ders with a thoughtful forward bent, his hair 
just sprinkled with gray, a beautiful deep-set 
eye, an aquiline nose, and a very indescri- 
bable mouth. Whether it expressed most 
humor or feeling, good nature or a kind of 
whimsical peevishness, or twenty other things 
which passed over it by turns, I cannot in the 
least be certain." 



BREAKFAST WITH MR. WILLIS. 345 

This is Mr. Willis's excellent picture of 
Lamb at that period. The guest places a 
large arm-chair for Mary Lamb ; Charles pulls 
it away, saying gravely, "Mary, don't take it; 
it looks as if you were going to have a tooth 
drawn." Miss Lamb was at that time very 
hard of hearing, and Charles took advantage 
of her temporary deafness to impute various 
improbabilities to her, which, however, were 
so obvious as to render any denial or expla- 
nation unnecessary. Willis told Charles that 
he had bought a copy of the " Elia " in 
America, in order to give to a friend. " What 
did you give for it?" asked Lamb. "About 
seven and sixpence." " Permit me to pay 
you that," said Lamb, counting out the money 
with earnestness on the table ; "I never yet 
wrote anything that could sell. I am the 
publisher's ruin. My last poem won't sell, 
— not a copy. Have you seen it?" No; 
Willis had not. " If s only eighteenpence, 
and I'll give you sixpence towards it," said 



246 MOVES TO ENFIELD. 

Lamb ; and he described where Wilhs would 
find it, " sticking up in a shop window in 
the Strand." Lamb ate nothing, but in- 
quired anxiously for some potted fish, which 

Mr. R used to procure for him. There 

was none in the house ; he therefore asked to 
see the cover of the pot which had contained 
it ; he thought it would do him good. It 
was brought, and on it was a picture of the 
fish. Lamb kissed it, and then left the table, 
and began to wander about the room, with 
an uncertain step, &c. 

This visit must have taken place, I suppose, 
at or after the time when Lamb was living 
at Colebrook Cottage ; and the breakfast took 
place probably in Mr. Henry Crabbe Robin- 
son's chambers in the Temple, where I fixst 
met Wordsworth. 

In the year 1827 Lamb moved into a small 
house at Enfield, a "gamboge-colored house," 
he calls it, where I and other friends went 
to dme with him ; but it was too far from 



CABICATUBE OF LAMB. 247 

London, except for rare visits. — It was rather 
before that time that a very clever caricature 
of him had been designed and engraved 
(" scratched on copper," as the artist termed 
it) by Mr, Brook Pulham. It is still extant; 
and although somewhat ludicrous and hyper- 
bolical in the countenance and outline, it 
certainly renders a likeness of Charles Lamb. 
The nose is monstrous, and the limbs are 
dwarfed and attenuated. Lamb himself, in a 
letter to Bernard Barton (loth August, 1827), 
adverts to it in these terms : " 'Tis a little 
sixpenny thing — too like by half — in which 
the draughtsman has done his best to avoid 
flattery." Charles's hatred for annuals and 
albums was continually breaking out : "I die 
of albophobia." " I detest to appear in an 
annual," he writes ; " I hate the paper, the 
type, the gloss, the dandy plates." " Cole- 
ridge is too deep," again he says, " among 
the prophets, the gentleman annuals." " If I 
take the wings of the morning, and fly to 



248 ACROSTICS. 

the uttermost parts of the earth, there will 
albums be." To Southey he writes about this 
time, "I have gone lately into the acrostic 
line. I find genius declines with me ; but I 
get clever." The reader readily appreciates 
the distinction which the humorist thus 
cleverly (more than cleverly) makes. In 
proof of his subdued quality, however, under 
the acrostical tyranny, I quote two little un- 
published specimens addressed to the Misses 
Locke, whom he had never seen. 

To M. L. [Mary Locke.] 

Must I write with pen unwilling, 
And describe those graces killing, 
Rightly, which I never saw ? 
Yes — it is the olbum's law. 

Let me then invention strain, 

On your excelling grace to feign. 

Cold is fiction. I believe it 

Kindly as I did receive it ; 

Even as I. F.'s tongue did weave it. 



PAINS OF LEISURE. . 249 

To S. L. [Sarah Locke.] 

Shall I praise a face unseen, 
And extol a fancied mien, 
Kave on visionary charm, 
And from shadows take alarm ? 
Hatred hates without a cause, 

Love may love without applause, 
Or, without a reason given. 
Charmed be with unknown heaven. 
Keep the secret, though unmocked. 
Ever in your bosom Locked. 

After the transfer to Mr. Southern of the 
" London Magazine," Lamb was prevailed 
upon to allow some short papers to be pub- 
lished in the " New Monthly Magazine." 
They were entitled " Popular Fallacies," and 
were subsequently published conjointly with 
the " Elia Essays." He also sent brief con- 
tributions to the "AthencEum" and the "Eng- 
lishman," and wrote some election squibs for 
Serjeant Wilde, during his then contest for 
" Newark." But his animal spirits were not 
so elastic as formerly, when his time was 



250 PAINS OF LEISURE. 

divided between official work and companion- 
able leisure ; the latter acting as a wholesome 
relief to his mind when wearied by labor. 

On this subject hear him speaking to Ber- 
nard Barton, to whom, as to others, he had 
formerly complained of his harassing duties 
at the India House, and of his delightful pros- 
pect of leisure. Now he writes, " Deadly 
long are the days, with but half an hour's 
candle-light and no fire-light. The streets, the 
shops remain, but old friends are gone." " I 
assure you " (he goes on) " no work is worse 
than overwork. The mind preys on itself — 
the most unwholesome food. I have ceased to 
care almost for anybody." To remedy this 
tedium, he tries visiting ; for the houses of 
his old friends were always open to him, 
and he had a welcome everywhere. But this 
visiting will not revive him. His spii"its de- 
scended to zero — below it. He is convinced 
that happiness is not to be found abroad. It 
is better to go " to my hole at Enfield, and 



PAINS OF LEISURE. 251 

hide like a sick cat in my corner." Again he 
says, " Home, I have none. Never did the 
waters of heaven pour down on a forlorner 
head. What I can do, and overdo, is to walk. 
I am a sanguinary murderer of time. But the 
snake is vital. Your forlorn — C. L." 

These are his meditations in 1829, four years 
only after he had rushed abroad, full of exal- 
tation and delight, from the prison of a " work- 
a-day" life, into the happy gardens of bound- 
less leisure. Time, which was once his friend, 
had become his enemy. His letters, which 
were always full of goodness, generally full of 
cheerful humor, sink into discontent. " I have 
killed an hour or two with this poor scrawl," 
he writes. It is unnecessary to inflict upon 
the reader all the points of the obvious 
moral that obtrudes itself at this period of 
Charles Lamb's history. It is clear that the 
Otiosa Eternitas was pressing upon his days, 
and he did not know how to find relief. Al- 
though a good Latin scholar, — indeed, fond 



252 THE BARTON COBBESPONDENCE. 

of writing letters in Latin, — he did not at 
this period resort to classical literature. I 
heard him indeed once (and once only) 
quote the well-known Latin verse from the 
Georgics, " O Fortunatos," &c., but generally 
he showed himself careless about Greeks and 
Romans ; and when (as Mr. Moxon states) 
" a traveller brought him some acorns from 
an ilex that grew over the tomb of Virgil, 
he valued them so little that he threw them 
at the hackney coachmen as they passed by 
his window." 

I have been much impressed by Lamb's 
letters to Bernard Barton, which are numer- 
ous, and which, taken altogether, are equal to 
any which he has written. The letters to 
Coleridge do not exhibit so much care or 
thought ; nor those to Wordsworth or Man- 
ning, nor to any others of his intellectual 
equals. These correspondents could think and 
speculate for themselves, and they were accord- 
ingly left to their own resources. " The Vol- 



DEATH OF HAZLITT. 253 

sees have much corn." But Bernard Barton 
was in a different condition ; he was poor. 
His education had been inferior, his range of 
reading and thinking had been very confined, 
his knowledge of the English drama being 
limited to Shakespeare apd Miss Baillie. He 
seems, how^ever, to have been an amiable man, 
desirous of cultivating the power, such as it 
was, which he possessed ; and Lamb there- 
fore lavished upon him — the poor Quaker 
clerk of a Suffolk banker — all that his wants 
or ambition required ; excellent worldly coun- 
sel, sound thoughts upon literature and art, 
critical advice on his own verses, letters 
which in their actual value surpass the wealth 
of many more celebrated collections. Lamb's 
correspondence with Barton, whom he had first 
known in 1822, continued until his death. 

In 1830 (September i8th) Hazlitt died. It 
is unnecessary to enter into any enumeration 
of his remarkable qualities. They were known 
to all his friends, and to some of his enemies. 



254 LAMB'S DEPBESSION. 

In Sir Edward Lytton's words, " He went 
down to the dust without having won the 
crown for which he so bravely struggled. He 
who had done so much for the propagation 
of thought, left no stir upon the surface when 
he sank." I will nqj in this place attempt to 
weave the moral which nevertheless lies hid 
in his unrequited life. At that time the num- 
ber of Lamb's old intimates was gradually 
diminished. The eternally recurring madness 
of his sister was more frequent. The hope- 
lessness of it — if hope indeed ever existed — 
was more palpable, more depressing. His 
own spring of mind was fast losing its pow- 
er of rebound. He felt the decay of the ac- 
tive principle, and now confined his efforts to 
morsels of criticism, to verses for albums, and 
small contributions to periodicals, which (ex- 
cepting only the "Popular Fallacies") it has 
not been thought important enough to reprint. 
To the editor of the " Athensum," indeed, he 
laments sincerely over the death of Munden. 



MUNDEN. 255 

This was in February, 1832, and was a mat- 
ter that touched his afiections. " He was not 
an actor" (he writes), "but something better." 
To a reader of the present day — even to a 
contemporary of Lamb himself — there was 
something ahiiost amounting to extravagance 
* in the terms of his admiration. Yet Munden 
was, in his way, a remarkable man ; and al- 
though he was an actor in farce, he often 
stood aloof and beyond the farce itself. The 
play was a thing merely on which to hang_ 
his own conceptions. These did not arise 
from the drama, but were elsewhere cogi- 
tated, and were interleaved, as it were, with 
the farce or comedy which served as an ex- 
cuse for their display. The actor was to all 
intents and pm'poses suz generis. 

To speak of my own impressions, Munden 
did not afiect me much in some of his earlier 
performances ; for then he depended on the 
play. Afterwards, when he took the matter 
into his own hands, and created personages 



256 MUNDEN. 

who owed little or nothing to the playwright, 
then he became an inventor. He rose with 
the occasion. Sic ivit ad astra. In the dra- 
ma of " Modern Antiques," especially, space 
was allowed him for his movements. The 
words were nothing. The pi'osperity of the 
piece depended exclusively on the genius of the * 
actor. Munden enacted the part of an old 
man credulous beyond ordinary credulity ; and 
when he came upon the stage there was in him 
an almost sublime look of wonder, passing 
over the scene and people around him, 
and settling apparently somewhere beyond the 
moon. What he believed in, improbable as it 
was to mere terrestrial visions, you at once 
conceived to be quite possible, — to be true. 
The sceptical idiots of the play pretend to 
give him a phial nearly full of water. He is 
assured that this contains Cleopatra's tear. 
Well; who can disprove it? Munden evi- 
dently recognized it. " What a large tear ! " 
he exclaimed. Then they place in his hands 



MUNDEN. 257 

a druidical harp, which to vulgar eyes might 
resemble a modern gridiron. He touches the 
chords gently ; " pipes to the spirit ditties of 
no tone ; " and you imagine ^olian strains. 
At last "William Tell's cap is produced. The 
people -who affect to cheat him, apparently cut 
the rim from a modern hat, and place the 
skull-cap in his hands ; and then begins the 
almost finest piece of acting that I ever wit- 
nessed. Munden accepts the accredited cap 
of Tell with confusion and reverence. He 
places it slowly and solemnly on his head, 
growing taller in the act of crowning him- 
self. Soon he swells into the " heroic size, — a 
great archer, — and enters upon his dreadful 
task. He weighs the arrow carefully; he tries 
the tension of the bow, the elasticity of the 
string ; and finally, after a most deliberate 
aim, he permits the arrow to fly, and looks 
forward at the same time with intense anxiety. 
You hear the twang, you see the hero's 
knitted forehead, his eagerness ; you tremble : 
17 



258 MUNDEN. 

at last you mark his calmer brow, his relax- 
ing smile, and are satisfied that the son is 
saved ! It is difficult to paint in words this 
extraordinaiy performance, which I have sev- 
eral times seen ; but you feel that it is tran- 
scendent. You think of Sagittarius, in the 
broad circle of the Zodiac.; you recollect that 
archery is as old as Genesis ; you are reminded 
that Ishmael, the son of Hagar, wandered 
about the Judffian deserts, and became an 
archer. 

The old actor is now dead ; but on his last 
performance, when he was to act Sir Robert 
Bramble, on the night of his taking final leave 
of the stage. Lamb greatly desired to be pres- 
ent. He had always loved the actors, espe- 
cially the old actors, from his youth ; and this 
was the last of the Romans. Accordingly 
Lamb and his sister went to the Drury Lane ; 
but there being no room in the ordinary parts 
of the house (boxes or pit), Munden obtained 
places for his two visitors in the orchestra, 



MUNDEN. 259 

close to the stage. He saw them carefully 
ushered in, and well posted ; then acted with 
his usual vigor, and no doubt enjoyed the 
plaudits wrung from a thousand hands. After- 
wards, in the interval between the comedy 
and the farce, he was seen to appear cau- 
tiously, diffidently, at the low door of the 
orchestra (where the musicians enter), and 
beckon to his friends, who then perceived that 
he was armed with a mighty pot of porter, 
for their refreshment. Lamb, grateful for the 
generous liquid, drank heartily, but not os- 
tentatiously, and returned the pot of beer to 
Munden, who had waited to remove it from 
fastidious eyes. He then retreated into the 
farce ; and then he retired — forever. 

After Munden's retirevnent Lamb almost 
entirely forsook the theatre ; and his habits 
became more solitary. He had not relin- 
quished society, nor professedly narrowed the 
circle of his friends. But insensibly his vis- 
itors became fewer in number, and came less 



26o LAMB BECOMES A BOABDEE. 

frequently. Some had died ; some had grown 
old ; some had increased occupation to care 
for. His old Wednesday evenings had ceased, 
and he had placed several miles of road be- 
tween London (the residence of their families) 
and his own home. The weight of years, in- 
deed, had its effect in jjressing down his 
strength and buoyancy ; his spirit no longer 
possessed its old power of rebound. Even 
the care of housekeeping (not very onerous, 
one would suppose) troubled Charles and his 
sister so much, that they determined to aban- 
don it. This occurred in 1829. Then they 
became boarders and • lodgers, with an old 
person (T. W.), who was their next-door 
neighbor at Enfield ; and of him Lamb has 
given an elaborate description. T. W., his 
new landlord or housekeeper, he says, is 
seventy years old ; "he has something under a 
competence ; " he has one joke, and forty 
pounds a year, upon which he retires in a 
green old age : he laughs when he hears a 



LETTER TO WOBDSWOBTH. 261 

joke, and when (which is much oftener) he 
hears it not. Having served the greater parish 
offices, Lamb and his sister become greater, 
being his lodgers, than they wei"e when sub- 
stantial householders. The children of the 
village venerate him for his gentility, but 
wonder also at him for a gentle indorsation 
of the person, not amounting to a hump, or, 
if one, then like that of the buffalo, and 
coronative of as mild qualities. 

Writing to Wordsworth (and speaking as a 
great landed proprietor), he says, "We have 
ridded ourselves of the dirty acres ; settled 
down into poor boarders and lodgers ; con- 
fiding ravens." The distasteful country, how- 
ever, still remains, and the clouds still hang 
over it. " Let not the lying poets be believed, 
who entice men from the cheerful streets," 
he writes. The country, he thinks, does well 
enough when he is amongst his books, by the 
fire and with candle-light ; but day and the 
green fields return and restore his natural 



263 MOVES' TO EDMONTON: 

antipathies ; then he says, " In a calenture I 
phinge into St. Giles's." So Lamb and his 
sister leave their comfortable little house, and 
subside into the rooms of the Humpback. 
Their chairs, and tables, and beds also retreat ; 
all except the ancient bookcase, full of his 
" ragged veterans." This I saw, years after 
Charles Lamb's death, in the possession of his 
sister, Mary. " All our furniture has faded," 
he writes, " under the auctioneer's hammer ; 
going for nothing, like the tarnished frippery 
of the prodigal." Four years afterwards (in 
1833) Lamb moves to his last home, in 
Church Street, Edmonton, where he is some- 
what nearer to his London friends. 

Very curious was the antipathy of Charles 
to objects that are generally so pleasant to 
other men. It was not a passing humor, 
but a life-long dislike. He admired the trees, 
and the meadows, and murmuring streams in 
poetry. I have heard him repeat some of 
Keats's beautiful lines in the Ode to the 



METROPOLITAN ATTACHMENT. 263 

Nightingale, about the " pastoral eglantine," 
with great delight. But that was another 
thing : that was an object in its proper 
place : that was a piece of art. Long ago 
he had admitted that the mountains of Cum- 
berland were grand objects " to look at ; " 
but (as he said) "the houses in streets 
were the places to live in." I imagine that 
he would no more have received the former 
as an equivalent for his own modest home, 
than he would have accepted a portrait as a 
substitute for a friend. He was, beyond all 
other men whom I have met, essentially met- 
ropolitan. He loved " the sweet security of 
streets," as he says : "I would set up my 
tabernacle there." 

In the spring of 1834, Coleridge's health 
began to decline. Charles had written to him 
(in reply) on the 14th April, at which time 
his friend had been evidently unwell ; for 
Lamb says that he is glad to see that he 
could write so long a letter. He was indeed 



264 DEATH OF COLEBIDQE. 

very ill ; and no further personal intercourse 
(I believe) took place between Charles and 
his old schoolfellow. Coleridge lay ill for 
months ; but his faculties seem to have sur- 
vived his bodily decay. He died on the 25th 
July, 1834; yet on the 5th of that month he 
was able to discourse with his nephew on 
Dryden and Barrow, on Lord Brook, and 
Fielding, and Richardson, without any ap- 
parent diminution of judgment. Even on 
the loth (a fortnight only before his death) 
there was no symptom of speedy dissolution : 
he then said, " The scenes of my early life 
have stolen "into my mind like breezes blown 
from the Spice Islands." Charles's sorrow- 
was unceasing. " He was my fifty years' old 
friend " (he says) " without a dissension. I 
cannot think without an ineffectual reference 
to him." Lamb's frequent exclamations, 
" Coleridge is dead ! Coleridge is dead ! " 
have been already noticed. 

And now the figures of other old friends of 



LAMB'S OLD FRIENDS. _ 265 

Charles Lamb, gradually (one by one), slip 
out of sight. Still, in his later letters are to be 
found glimpses of Wordsworth and Southey, 
of Rogers and Hood, of Gary (with whom 
his intimacy increases) ; especially may be 
noted Miss Isola, whom he tenderly regarded, 
and after whose marriage (then left more 
alone) he retreats to his last retreat, in 
Church Street, Edmonton. 

From details let us escape into a more 
general narrative. The latest facts need not 
be painfully enumerated. There is little left, 
indeed, to particularize. Mary's health fluctu- 
ates, perhaps, more frequently than heretofore. 
At one time she is well and happy ; at 
another her mind becomes turbid, and she is 
then sheltered, as usual, under her brother's 
care. The last Essays of Elia are published ; 
— friends visit him ; — and he occasionally 
visits them in London. He dines with Tal- 
fourd and Cary. The sparks which are 
brought out are as bright as ever, although 



266 LETTER TO BOGEBS. 

the splendor is not so frequent. Apparently 
the bodily strength, never great, but sufficient 
to move him pleasantly throughout life, seemed 
to flag a little. Yet he v^alks as usual. He 
and his sister " scramble through the Inferno : " 
(as he says to Gary), "Mary's chief pride in 
it was, that she should some day brag of it 
to you." Then he and Mary became veiy 
poorly. He vs^rites, "We have had a sick 
child, sleeping, or not sleeping, next to me, 
vs^ith a pasteboard partition between, who 
killed my sleep. My bedfellows are Cough 
and Cramp : we sleep three in a bed. Don't 
come yet to this house of jDest and age." 
This is in 1833. -^^ ^^^^^ ^^^'^ ^^ ^^^^ year (in 
December) he writes (once more humorously) 
to Rogers, expressing, amongst other things, 
his love for that fine artist, Stothard : "I 
met the dear old man, and it was sublime 
to see him sit, deaf, and enjoy all that was 
going on mirthful with the company. He 
reposed upon the many graceful and many 



LAMB '8 FALL. 267 

fantastic images he had created." His last 
letter, written to Mrs. Dyer on the day after 
his fall, was an effort to recover a book of 
Mr. Gary, which had been mislaid or lost, 
so anxious was he always that every man 
should have his own. 

In December, 1834, the history of Charles 
Lamb comes suddenly to a close. He had all 
along had a troubled day : now came the 
night. His spirits had previously been toler- 
ably cheerful ; reading and conversing, as 
heretofore, with his friends, on subjects that 
■were familiar to him. There was little mani- 
fest alteration or falling off in his condition 
of mind or body. He took his morning 
walks as usual. One day he stumbled against 
a stone, and fell. His face was slightly 
"wounded ; but no fatal (or even alarming) 
consequence was foreboded. Erysipelas, how- 
ever, followed the wound, and his strength 
(never robust) was not sufficient to enable 
him to combat successfully that inflammatory 



268 HIS DEATH. 

and exhausting disease. He suffered no pain 
(I believe) ; and when the presence of a 
clergyman was suggested to him, he made no 
remark, but understood that his life was in 
danger ; he was quite calm and collected, 
quite resigned. At last his voice began to 
fail, his perceptions became confused, and he 
sank gradually, very gradually, until the 27th 
of December, 1834; ^^^ then — he died! It 
was the fading away or disappearance of life, 
rather than a violent transit into another 
world. 

He died at Edmonton ; not, as has been sup- 
posed, at Enfield, to which place he never re- 
turned as to a place of residence, after he had 
once quitted it. 

It is not true that he was ever deranged, or 
subjected to any restraint, shortly before his 
death. There never was the least symptom 
of mental disturbance in him after the time 
(1795-6) when he was placed for a few weeks 
in Hoxton Asylum, to allay a little nervous 



LAMB'S AGE. 269 

imtation. If it were necessary to confirm this 
assertion, which is known to me from personal 
observation and other incontrovertible evidence, 
I would adduce ten of his published letters (in 
1833) and several in 1834; ^^^ °^ them bear- 
ing date only four days before his death. All 
these documents afford ample testimony of his 
clear good sense and kind heart, some of them, 
indeed, being tinged with his usual humor. 

Charles Lamb was fifty-nine years old at his 
death ; of the same age as Ci"omwell, between 
whom and himself there was of course no other 
similitude. A few years before, when he was 
about to be released from his wearisome toil 
at the India House, he said exultingly, that he 
was passing out of Time into Eternity. But 
now came the true Eternity ; the old Eternity, 
— without change or limit ; in which all men 
surrender their leisure, as well as their labor ; 
when their sensations and infirmities (some- 
times harassing enough) cease and are at rest. 
No more anxiety for the debtor ; no more toil 



270 LAMB'S ECONOMY. 

for the worker. The rich man's ambition, the 
poor man's pains, at last are over. Ilic jacet. 
That "forlorn" inscription is the universal 
epitaph. What a world of moral, what spec- 
ulations, what pathetic wishes, and what ter- 
rible dreams, lie enshrouded in that one final 
issue, which we call — Death. 

To him who never gave pain to a human 
being, whose genius yielded nothing but in- 
struction and delight, was awarded a calm and 
easy death. No man, it is my belief, was ever 
loved or lamented more sincerely than Charles 
Lamb, His sister (his elder by a decade) sur- 
vived him for the space of thirteen years. 

By strict economy, without meanness ; with 
much unpretending hospitality ; with frequent 
gifts and lendings, and without any borrowing, 
— he accumulated, during his thirty-three years 
of constant labor, the moderate sum of two 
thousand pounds. No more. That was the 
sum, I believe, which was eventually shared 
amongst his legatees. His other riches were 



LAMB'S WILL. 271 

gathered together and deposited elsewhere ; in 
the memory of those who loved him, — and 
there were many of them, — or amongst others 
of our Anglo-Saxofi race, whose minds he has 
helped to enrich and soften. 

The property of Charles Lamb, or so much 
as might be wanted for the purpose, was by his 
will directed to be applied towards the main- 
tenance and comfort of his sister ; and, subject 
to this primary object, it was vested in trustees 
for the benefit of Miss Isola — Mrs. Moxon. 

Mary Lamb's comforts were supplied, with 
anxiety and tenderness, throughout the thirteen 
years during which she survived her brother. 
I went to see her, after her brother's death ; 
but her frequent illnesses did not render visits 
at all times welcome or feasible. She then re- 
sided in Alpha Road, Saint John's Wood, under 
the care of an experienced nurse. There was 
a twilight of consciousness in her, — scarcely 
more, — at times ; so that perhaps the mercy 
of God saved her from full knowledge of her 



272 DEATH OF MARY LAMB. 

great loss. Charles, who had given up all 
his days for her protection and benefit, — who 
had fought the great battle of life so nobly, — 
left her " for that unknown and silent shore," 
where, it is hoped, the brother and sister will 
renew the love which once united them on 
earth, and made their lives holy. Mary Lamb 
died on the 20th May, 1847 ; and the brother 
and sister now lie near each other (in the sajne 
grave) in the churchyard of Edmonton, in Mid- 
dlesex. 



( 273 ) 



POSTSCRIPT. 



I HAVE thus told, as far as my ability per- 
mits, the story of the life of Charles Lamb. 

I have not ventured to deduce any formidable 
moral from it. Like Lamb himself, I have great 
dislike to ostentatious precepts and impertinent 
lessons. Facts themselves should disclose their 
own virtues. A man w^ho is able to benefit by 
a lesson will, no doubt, discover it, under any 
husk or disguise, before it is stripped and laid 
bare — to the kernel. 

Besides, too much teaching may disagree 
with the reader. It is apt to harden the heart, 
wearying the attention, and mortifying the 
self-love. Svich disturbances of the system in- 
terfere with the digestion of a truth. 

Even Gulliver is sometimes too m^anifestly 
i8 



274 POBTSQBIPT. 

didactic. His adventures, simply told, would 
have emitted spontaneously a luminous atmos- 
phere, and need not have been distilled into 
brilliant or pungent drops. 

No history is barren of good. Even from 
the foregoing narrative some benefit may be 
gleaned, some sympathy may be excited, w^hich 
naturally forms itself into a lesson. 

Let us look at it cursorily. 

Charles Lamb was born almost in penury, 
and he was taught by charity. Even when a 
boy he was forced to labor for his bread. In 
the first opening of manhood a terrible calamity 
fell upon him, in magnitude fit to form the 
mystery or centre of an antique drama. He 
had to dwell, all his days, with a person in- 
curably mad. From poverty he passed at once 
to unpleasant toil a,nd perpetual fear. These 
were the sole changes in his fortune. Yet 
he gained friends, respect, a position, and 
great sympathy from all ; showing what one 
poor man of genius, under grievous misfortune. 



POSTSCRIPT. 275 

may do, if he be courageous and faithful to 
the end. 

Charles Lamb never preached nor prescribed, 
but let his own actions tell their tale and pro- 
duce their natural effects ; neither did he deal 
out little apothegms or scraps of wisdom, 
derived from other minds. But he succeeded ; 
and in every success there must be a mainstay 
of right or truth to support it ; otherwise it will 
eventually fail. 

It is true that in his essays and numerous 
letters many of his sincere thoughts -and 
opinions are written down. These, however, 
are written down simply, and just as they 
occur, without any special design. Some per- 
sons exhibit only their ingenuity, or learning. 
It is not every one who is able, like the licen- 
tiate Pedro Garcias, to deposit his wealth of 
soul by the road-side. 

Like all persons of great intellectual sensi- 
bility, Lamb responded to all impressions. To 
sympathize with Tragedy or Comedy only, 



276 POSTSCRIPT. 

argues a limited capacity. The mind thus 
coAstructed is partially lame or torpid. One 
hemisphere has never been reached. 

It should not be forgotten that Lamb pos- 
sessed one great advantage. He lived and died 
amongst Ms equals. This was w^hat enabled 
him to exercise his natural strength, as neither 
a parasite nor a patron can. It is marvellous 
how freedom of thought operates ; what strength 
it gives to the system ; with what lightness and 
freshness it endues the spirit. Then, he was 
made stronger by trouble ; made wiser by grief. 

I have not attempted to fix the precise spot 
in which Charles Lamb is to shine hereafter in 
the firmament of letters. I am not of sufficient 
magnitude to determine his astral elevation — 
where he is to dwell — between the sun Shake- 
speare and the twinkling Zoilus. That must 
be left to time. Even the fixed stars at first 
waver and coruscate, and require long seasons 
for their consummation and final settlement. 

Whenever he differs with us in opinion (as 



POSTSCRIPT. 277 

he does occasionally), let us not hastily pro- 
nounce him to be wrong. It is wise, as well 
as modest, not to show too much eagerness to 
adjust the ideas of all other thinkers to the 
(sometimes low) level of our own. 



( 279 ) 



APPENDIX. 



TN the following pages will be found the 
•*- opinions of several distinguished authors 
on the subject of Charles Lamb's genius and 
character, and also a contribution (by himself) 
to the Athenceum^ made in January, 1835. All 
the writers were contemporaiy with Lamb, and 
were personally intimate with him. The ex- 
tracts may be accepted as corroborative, in some 
degree, of the opinions set forth in the forego- 
ing Memoir. 

HAZLITT. 

\_From Hazlitfs ^'•Spirit of the Age." Title, 
" Blia."'] 

Mr. Lamb has the very soul of an antiquarian, 
as this implies a reflecting humanity. The film 
of the past hovers forever before him. He is 
shy, sensitive, the reverse of everything coarse. 



28o APPENDIX. 

vulgar, obtrusive, and commonplace. His spirit 
clothes itself in the garb of elder time ; homelier, 
but more durable. He is borne along with no 
pompous paradoxes, shines in no glittering tinsel 
of a fashionable phraseology, is neither fop nor 
sophist. He has none of the turbulence or froth 
of new-fangled opinions. His style runs pure 
and clear, though it may often take an under- 
ground course, or be conveyed through old- 
fashioned conduits. . . . There is a fine tone of 
chiaro-scuro, a moral perspective in his writings. 
He delights to dwell on that which is fresh to the 
eye of memor}^ ; he yearns after and covets what 
soothes the frailty of human nature. That touches 
him most nearly which is withdrawn to a certain 
distance, which verges on the borders of oblivion ; 
that piques and provokes his fancy most which 
is hid from a superficial glance. That which, 
though gone by, is still remembered, is in his 
view more genuine, and has given more signs 
that it will live, than a thing of yesterday, which 
may be forgotten to-morrow. Death has in this 
sense the spirit of life in it ; and the shadowy has 
to our author something substantial. 

Mr. Lamb has a distaste to new faces, to new 
books, to new buildings, to new customs. He is 
shy of all imposing appearances, of all assump- 
tions of self-importance, of all adventitious orna- 
ments, of all mechanical advantages, even to a 



APPENDIX. 281 

nervous excess. It is not merely that he does not 
rely upon, or ordinarily avail himself of them ; 
he holds them in abhorrence : he utterly abjures 
and discards them. He disdains all the vulgar 
artifices of authorship, all the cant of criticism 
and helps of notoriety. 

His affections revert to and settle on the past ; 
but then even this must have something per- 
sonal and local in it to interest him deeply and 
thoroughly. He pitches his tent in the suburbs 
of existing manners, and brings down his ac- 
count of character to the few straggling remains 
of the last generation. No one makes the tour 
of our southern metropolis, or describes the man- 
ners of the last age, so well as Mr. Lamb, — with 
so fine, and yet so formal an air. How ad- 
mirably he has sketched the former inmates of 
the South Saa House ; what " fine fretwork he 
makes of their double and single entries ! " 

With what a firm yet subtle -pencil he has em- 
bodied Mrs. Battle's opinions on Whist ! With 
what well-disguised humor he introduces us to 
his relations, and how freely he serves up his 
friends ! 

The streets of London are his fairy-land, teem- 
ing with wonder, with life and interest to his 
retrospective glance, as it did to the eager eye of 
childhood : he has contrived to weave its tritest 
traditions into a bright and endless romance. 



282 APPENDIX. 

\_From Hazlitfs " Table Talk," Vol. II.] 

Mr. Lamb' is the only imitator of old English 
style I can read with pleasure ; and he is so 
thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his authors, 
that the idea of imitation is almost done away. 
There is an inward unction, a marrowy vein both 
in the thought and feeling, an intuition, deep and 
lively, of his subject, that carries off any quaint- 
ness or awkwardness arising from an antiquated 
style and dress. The matter is completely his 
own, though the manner is assumed. Perhaps 
his ideas are altogether so marked and individual, 
as to require their point and pungency to be neu- 
tralized by the affectation of a singular but tradi- 
tional form of conveyance. Tricked out in the 
prevailing costume, they would probably seem 
more startling and out of the way. The old 
English authors. Burton, Fuller, Coryate, Sir 
Thomas Browne,, are a kind of mediators between 
us and the more eccentric and whimsical modern, 
reconciling us to his peculiarities. I must con- 
fess that what I like best of his papers under the 
signature of Elia (still I do not presume, amidst 
such excellence, to decide what is most excel- 
lent) is the account of Mrs. Battle's '' Opinions 
on Whist," which is also the most free from ob- 
solete allusions and turns of exjDression, — 

" A well of native English undefiled." 



APPENDIX. '283 

To those acquainted with his admired proto- 
types, these Essays of the ingenious and Iiighly 
gifted autlior have the same sort of charm and 
rehsh that Erasmus's " Colloquies," or a fine 
piece of modern Latin, have to the classical 
scholar. — '■'•On Familiar Style." 

IHazlitfs ''Plain Speaker," Vol. I. p. 62.] 

At Lamb's we used to have lively skirmishes 
at their Thursday evening parties. I doubt 
whether the Small Coal-man's musical parties 
could exceed them. O for the pen of John 
Buncle to consecrate a petit souvenir to their 
memory ! There was Lamb himself, the most 
delightful, the most provoking, the most witty 
and sensible of men. He always made the best 
pun and the best remark in the course of the 
evening. His serious qpnversation, like his seri- 
ous writing, is his best. No one ever stammered 
out such fine, piqviant, deep^ eloquent things, in 
half a dozen sentences, as he does. His jests 
scald like tears, and he probes a question with a 
play upon words. What a keen, laughing, hair- 
brained vein of homefelt truth ! What choice 
venom ! How often did we cut into the haunch 
of letters ! How we skimmed the cream of crit- 
icism ! How we picked out the marrow of au- 
thors ! Need I go over the names ? They were 



284 APPENDIX. 

but the old, everlasting set — Milton and Shakes- 
peare, Pope and Dryden, Steele and Addison, 
Swift and Gay, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Rich- 
ardson, Hogarth's prints, Claude's landscapes, 
the Cartoons at Hampton Court, and all those 
things that, having once been, must ever be. 
The Scotch Novels had not then been heard of: 
so v^e said nothing about them. In general we 
were hard upon the moderns. The author of the 
" Rambler" was only tolerated in Boswell's Life 
of him ; and it was as much as any one could do 
to edge in a word for Junius. Lamb could not 
bear Gil Bias: this was a fault. I remember 
the greatest triumph I ever had was in persuad- 
ing him, after'some years' difficulty, that Fielding 
was better than Smollett. On one occasion he was 
for making out a list of persons famous in history 
that one would wish to see again, at the head of 
whom were Pontius Pilate, Sir Thomas Browne, 
and Dr. Faustus ; but we black-balled most of his 
list ! But with what a gusto would he describe 
his favorite authors, Donne or Sir Philip Sidney, 
and call their most crabbed passages delicious! 
He tried them on his palate, as epicures taste 
olives, and his observations had a smack in them, 
like a rougliness on the tongue. With what dis- 
crimination he hinted a defect in what he admired 
most, — as in saying the display of the sumptuous 
banquet, in " Paradise Regained," was not in true 



APPENDIX. 285 

keeping, as the simplest fare was all that was 
necessary to tempt the extremity of hunger ; and 
stating that Adam and Eve in " Paradise Lost" 
were too much like married people. He has 
furnished many a text for Coleridge to preach 
upon. There was no fuss or cant about him ; 
nor were his sweets or sours ever diluted with one 
particle of affectation. — "O;? i/ie Conversation 
of Authors." 

\_From '■^Atitohiography of Leigh Hunt" pp. 
250-253O 

Let me take this opportunity of recording my 
recollections in general of my friend Lamb ; of 
all the world's friend, particularly of his oldest 
friends, Coleridge and Southey ; for I think he 
never modified or withheld any opinion (in pri- 
vate or bookwards) except in consideration of 
what he thought they might not like. 

Charles Lamb had a head worthy of Aristotle, 
with as fine a heart as ever beat in human bosom, 
and limbs very fragile to sustain it. There was 
a caricature of him sold in the shops, which 
pretended to be a likeness. Procter went into 
the shop in a passion, and asked the man what 
he meant by putting forth such a libel. The man 
apologized, and said that the artist meant no 
offence. There never was a true portrait of 



286 APFENlhx. 

Lamb. His features were strongly yet delicately 
cut ; he had a fine eye as well as forehead ; and 
no face carried in it greater marks of thought 
and feeling. It resembled that of Bacon, with 
less worldly vigor and more sensibility. 

As his frame, so was his genius. It was as fit 
for thought as could be, and equally as unfit for 
action ; and this rendered him melancholy, ap- 
prehensive, humorous, and willing to make the 
best of everything as it was, both from tenderness 
of heart and abhorrence of alteration. His un- 
derstanding was too great to admit an absurdity ; 
his frame was not strong enough to deliver it 
from a fear. His sensibility to strong contrasts 
was the foundation of his humor, which was that 
of a wit at once nielancholy and willing to be 
pleased. . . . His puns were admirable, and 
often contained as deep things as the wisdom of 
some who have greater names ; such a man, for 
instance, as Nicole, the Frenchman, who was a 
baby to him. Lamb would have cracked a score 
of jokes at Nicole, worth his whole book of 
sentences ; pelted his head with pearls. Nicole 
would not have understood him, but Rochefou- 
cault would, and Pascal too ; and some of our 
old Englishmen would have understood, him still 
bettpr. He would have been worthy of hearing 
Shakespeare read one of his scenes to him, hot 
from the brain. Commonplace found a great 



APPENDIX. 287 

comfortei' in him, as long as it was good-natured ; 
it was to the ill-natured or the dictatorial only 
that he was startling. Willing to see society go 
on as it did, because he despaired of seeing it 
otherwise, but not at all agreeing in his interior 
with the common notions of crime and punish- 
ment, he " dimifounded" a long tirade against 
vice one evening, by taking the pipe out of his 
mouth, and asking the speaker, "Whether he 
meant to say that a thief was not a good man?" 
To a person abusing Voltaire, and indiscreetly 
opposing his character to that of Jesus Christ, he 
said admirably well (though he by no means over- 
rated Voltaire, nor wanted reverence in the other 
quarter), that "Voltaire was a very good Jesus 
Christ ybr the French" He liked to see the 
church-goers continue to go to church, and wrote 
a tale in his sister's admirable little book {^Mrs. 
Leicester' s School) to encourage the rising gen- 
eration to do so ; but to a conscientious deist he 
had nothing to object ; and if an atheist had 
found every other door shut against him, he 
v^^ould assuredly not have found his. I believe 
he would have had the world remain precisely as 
it was, provided it .innovated no further ; but this 
spirit in him was anything but a worldly one, or 
for his own interest. He hardly contemplated 
with patience the new buildings in the Regent's 
Park ; and, privately speaking, he had a grudge 



288 APPENDIX. 

against official heaven-expounders, or clergymen. 
He would rather, however, have been with a 
crowd that he disliked, than felt himself alone. 
He said to me one day, with a face of great 
solemnity, " What must have been that man's 
feelings, who thought himself the jirst deist?" 
. . . He knew how many false conclusions and 
pretensions are made by men who profess to be 
guided by facts only, as if facts could not be 
misconceived, or figments taken for them ; and 
therefore, one day, when somebody was speak- 
ing of a person who valued himself on being a 
matter-of-fact man, " Now," said he, " I value 
myself on being a raatter-of-lie man." This did 
not hinder his being a man of the greatest ve- 
racity, in the ordinary sense of the word ; but 
" truth," he said, " was precious, and not to be 
wasted on everybody." Those vdio w^ish to have 
a genuine taste of him, and an insight into his 
modes of life, should read his essays on Hogarth 
and King Lear^ his Letters^ his article on the 
London Streets^ on Whist- Play iizg^ which he 
loves, and on Saying Grace before Meat., which 
he thinks a strange rnoment to select for being 
grateful. He said once to a brother whist-player, 
whose hand was more clever than clean, and 
who had enough in him to afibrd the joke, " M., 
if dirt were trumps, what hands you would 
hold ! " 



APPENDIX. 289 



FORSTER. 

\_From Mr. yohn Forsters Contribution to 
the New Monthly Magazine., 1835. Title, 
" Charles L,atnb."~\ 

Charles Lamb's first -appearance in literature 
was by the side of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 
He came into his first battle, as he tells us (litera- 
ture is a sort of warfare), under cover of that 
greater Ajax. 

We should like to see this remarkable friend- 
ship (remarkable in all respects and in all its 
circvuTistances) between two of the most original 
geniuses in an age of no common genius, worthily 
recorded. It would outvalue, in the view of pos- 
terity, many centuries of literary quarrels. 

Lamb never faii'ly recovered the death of Cole- 
ridge. He thought of little else (his sister was 
but another poi"tion of himself) until his own 
great spirit joined his friend's. He had a habit 
of venting his melancholy in a sort of mirth. He 
would, with nothing graver than a pun, " cleanse 
his bosom of the. perilous stuff that weighed " 
upon it. In a jest, or a few light phrases, he 
would lay open the recesses of his heart. So in 
respect of the death of Coleridge. Some old 
friends of his saw him tv^^o or three weeks ago, 

19 



290 APPENDIX. 

and remarked the constant turning and reference 
of his mind. He interrupted himself and them 
almost every instant with some play of affected 
wonder or humorous melancholy on the words 
" Coleridge is dead." Nothing could divert him 
from that, for the thought of it never left him. 
About the same time, we had written to him to 
request a few lines for the literary albuin of a 
gentleman who entertained a fitting admiration 
of his genius. It was the last request we were to 
make, and the last kindness we were to receive. 

He wrote in Mr. 's volume, and wrote of 

Coleridge. This, we believe, w^as the last pro- 
duction of his pen. A strange and not 'Un- 
enviable chance, which saw him at the end of his 
literary pilgrimage, as he had been at the be- 
ginning, — in that iinmortal company. We are 
indebted, with the reader, to the kindness of our 
friend for permission to print the whole of what 
was written. It would be impertinence to offer 
a remark on it. Once read, its noble and affec- 
tionate tenderness will be remembered foi'ever. 

" When I heard of the death of Coleridge, it 
was without grief. It seemed to me that he long 
had been on the confines of the next world, — 
that he had a hunger for eternity. I grieved then 
that I could not grieve. But since, I feel how 
great a part he was of me. His great and dear 
spirit haunts me. I cannot tbLiK a thought, I 



APPENDIX. 291 

cannot make a criticism on men or books, with- 
out an ineffectual tvu'ning and reference to him. 
He was the proof and touchstone of all my cogi- 
tations. He was a Grecian (or in the first form) 
at Chi'ist's Hospital, where I was deputy Grecian ; 
and the same subordination and deference to him 
I have preserved through a life-long acquaint- 
ance. Great in his writings, he was greatest in 
his conversation. In him was disproved that old 
maxim, that we should allow every one his share 
of talk. He would talk from morn to dewy eve, 
nor cease till far n:iidnight ; yet who ever would 
interrupt him, — who would obstruct that con- 
tinuous flow^ of converse, fetched from Helicon or 
Zion? He had the tact of making the unintel- 
ligible seem plain. Many who read the abstruser 
parts of his "Friend" would complain that his 
works did not answer to his spoken wisdom. 
They were identical. But he had a tone in oral 
delivery, which seemed to convey sense to those 
who were otherwise imperfect recipients. He 
was my fifty years old friend without a dissension. 
Never saw I his likeness, nor probably the world 
can see again. I seem to love the house he died 
at more passionately than when he lived. I love 
the faithful Gilmans more than while they exer- 
cised their virtues towards him living. What was 
his mansion is consecrated to me a chapel. 

" Chas. Lamb. 
"Edmonton, November 21, 1834." 



392 APPENDIX. 

Within five weeks. of this date Charles Lamb 
died. A sliglil: accident brought on an attack of 
erysipelas, which proved fatal ; his system was 
not strong enough for resistance. It is some con- 
solation to add, that, during his illness, which 
lasted four days, he suffered no pain, and that his 
faculties remained with him to the last. A few 
words spoken by him the day before he died 
showed with what quiet collectedness he was 
prepared to meet death. 

As an Essayist, Charles Lamb will be re- 
membered, in years to come, with Rabelais and 
Montaigne, with Sir Thomas Browne, with 
Steele, and with Addison. He unites many of 
the finest characteristics of these several writers. 
He has wisdom and wit of the highest order, 
exquisite humor, a genuine and cordial vein of 
pleasantry, and the most heart-touching pathos. 
In the largest acceptation of the word he is a 
humanist. No one of the great family of authors 
past or present has shown in matters the most 
important or the most trivial so delicate and 
extreme a sense of all that is human. It is the 
prevalence of this characteristic in his writings 
which has subjected him to occasional charges 
of want of imagination. This, however, is but 
half-criticism ; for the matter of reproach may in 
fact be said to be his triumph. It was with a 
deep relish of Mr. Lamb's faculty that a friend 



APPENDIX. 293 

of his once said, " He makes the majesties of 
imagination seem famihar." It is precisely thus 
with his own imagination. It eludes the observa- 
tion of the ordinary reader in the modesty of its 
truth, in its social and familiar air. His fancy as 
an Essayist is distinguished by singular delicacy 
and tenderness ; and even his conceits will 
generally be found to be, as those of his favorite 
Fuller often are, steeped in human feeling and 
passion. The fondness he entertained for Fuller, 
for the author of the "Anatomy of Melancholy," 
and for other writers of that class, was a pure 
matter of temperament. His thoughts were al- 
ways his own. Even when his words seem cast 
in the very mould of others, the perfect origi- 
nality of his thinking is felt and acknowledged ; 
we may add, in its superior wisdom, manliness, 
and unaffected sweetness. Every sentence in 
those Essays may be proved to be crammed full 
of thinking. The two volumes will be multiplied, 
we have no doubt, in the course of a few years, 
into as many hundreds ; for they contain a stock 
of matter which must be ever suggestive to more 
active minds, and will surely revisit the world in 
new shapes — an everlasting succession and va- 
riety of ideas. The past to him was not mere 
dry antiquity ; it involved a most extensive and 
touching association of feelings and tnoughts, re- 
minding him of what we have been and may be, 



294 AFPENDIX. 

and seeming to afford a surer ground for resting 
on than the things which are here to-day and may- 
be gone to-morrow. We know of no inquisition 
more curious, no speculation more lofty, than 
may be found in the Essays of Charles Lamb. 
We know no place where conventional absurdi- 
ties receive so little quarter ; where stale evasions 
are so plainly exposed ; where the barriers be- 
tween names and things are at times so coinpletely 
flung down. And how, indeed, could it be other- 
w^ise? For it is truth that plays upon his writ- 
ings like a genial and divine atmosphere. No 
need for them to prove what they would be at by 
any formal or logical analysis ; no need for him 
to tell the world that this institution is wrong and 
that doctrine right ; the world may gather from 
those writings their surest guide to judgment in 
these and all other cases — a general and honest 
appreciation of the humane and true. 

Mr. Lamb's personal appearance was remarka- 
ble. It quite realized the expectations of those 
who tliink that an author and a wit should have 
a distinct air, a separate costume, a particular 
cloth, something positive and singular about him. 
Such unquestionably had Mr. Lamb. Once he 
rejoiced in snuff-color, but latterly his costume 
was inveterately black — with gaiters which 
seemed longing for somethmg more substantial 
to close in. His legs were remarkably slight ; 



APPENDIX. 295 

so indeed was his whole body, which was of 
short stature, but surmounted by a head of amaz- 
ing fineness. His face was deeply marked and 
full of noble lines — traces of sensibility, imagi- 
nation, sufiering, and much thought. His wit 
was in his eye, luminous, quick, and restless. 
The smile that played about his mouth was ever 
cordial and good-hvimored ; and the most cordial 
and delightful of its smiles were those with which 
he accompanied his affectionate talk with his 
sister, or his jokes against her. 



TALFOURD. 

[^From Talfourd^s '•'• Memorials of C. Lamb" 
PP- 337-8' 342-3-] 

Except to the few who were acquainted with 
the tragical occurrences of Lamb's early life, 
some of his peculiarities seemed strange, — to be 
forgiven, indeed, to the excellences of his nature 
and the delicacy of his genius, — but still, in 
themselves, as much to be wondered at as de- 
plored. The sweetness of his character, breathed 
through his wi'itings, was felt even by strangers ; 
but its heroic aspect was unguessed even by 
many of his friends. Let them now consider it, 
and ask if the annals of self-sacrifice can show 



296 APPENDIX. 

anything in human action and endurance more 
lovely than its self-devotion exhibits ! It was not 
merely that he saw through the ensanguined 
cloud of misfoii;une which had fallen upon his 
family, the unstained excellence of his sister, 
whose madness had caused it ; that he was ready 
to take her to his own home with reverential 
affection, and cherish her through life ; that he 
gave up, for her sake, all meaner and more 
selfish love, and all the hopes which youth blends 
with the passion which disturbs and ennobles it ; 
not even that he did all this cheerfully, and with- 
out pluming himself upon his brotherly nobleness 
as a virtue, or seeking to repay himself (as some 
uneasy martyrs do) by small instalments of long 
repining, — but that he can'ied the spirit of the 
hour in which he first knew and took his course, 
to his last. So far from thinking that his sacri- 
fice of youth and love to his sister gave him a 
license to follow his own caprice at the expense 
of her feelings, even in the lightest matters, he 
always wrote and spoke of her as his wiser self, 
his generous benefactress, of whose protecting 
care he was scarcely worthy. How liis pen al- 
most grew wanton in her praise, even when she 
was a prisoner in the Asylum after the fatal 
attack of lur;acy, his letters of the time to Cole- 
ridge show ; but that might have been a mere 
temporary exaltation — thfe attendant feiTor of 



APPENDIX. 297 

a great exigency and a great resolution. It was 
not so. 

Nervous, tremulous, as lie seemed — so light 
of frame that he looked only fit for the most 
placid foilune — when the dismal emergencies 
which checkered his life arose, he acted with as 
much promptitude and vigor as if he had never 
penned a stanza nor taken a glass too much, or 
was strung with herculean sinews. None of 
those temptations, in which misery is the most 
potent, to hazard a lavish expenditure for an en- 
joyment to be secured against fate and fortune, 
ever tempted him to exceed his income, when 
scantiest, by a sliilling. He had always a reserve 
for poor Marys periods of seclusion, and some- 
thing in hand besides for a friend in need ; and 
on his retirement from the India House, he had 
amassed, by annual savings, a sufficient sum (in- 
vested, after the prudent and classical taste of 
Lord Stowell, in " the elegant simplicity of the 
Three per Cents.") to secure comfort to Miss 
Lamb, when his pension should ceas.e with him, 
even if the India Company, his great employers, 
had not acted nobly by the memory of their in- 
spired clerk — as they did — and gave her the 
annuity to which a wife would have been enti- 
tled — but of which he could not feel assured. 
Living among literary men, some less dis- 
tinguished and less discreet than those whom 



298 APPENDIX. 

we have mentioned, he was constantly impor- 
tuned to relieve distresses which an improvident 
speculation in literature produces, and which the 
recklessness attendant on the empty vanity of 
self-exaggerated talent renders desperate and 
merciless — and to the importunities of such hope- 
less petitioners he gave too largely — though he 
used sometimes to express a painful sense that he 
was diminishing his own store without conferring 
any real benefit. " Heaven," he used to say, 
" does not owe me sixpence for all I have given, 
or lent (as they call it) to such importunity ; I 
only gave it because I could not bear to refuse 
it ; and I have done good by my weakness." 



\^B. W. P. '■'■ Aihenceum" January 24, 1835.] 

I was acquainted with Mr. Lamb for about 
seventeen or eighteen years. I saw him first (I 
think., for my recollection is here imperfect) at 
one of Hazlitt's lectures, or at one of Coleridge's 
dissertations on Shakespeare, where the meta- 
physician sucked oranges and said a hundred 
wonderful things. They were all three extraor- 
dinary men. Hazlitt had more of the specula- 
tive and philosophical faculty, and more observa- 
tion (c2>cz^;;zspection) than Lamb ; whilst Cole- 
ridge was more subtle and ingenious than either. 



APPENDIX. 299 

Lamb's qualities were a sincere, generous, and 
tender nature, wit (at command), humor, fancy, 
and — if the creation of character be a test of 
imagination, as I apprehend it is — imagination 
also. Some of his phantasms — the people of 
the South Sea House, Mrs. Battle, the Benchers 
of the Middle Temple, &c. (all of them ideal), 
might be grouped into comedies. His sketches 
are always (to quote his own eulogy on Marvell) 
full of "a witty delicacy," and, if properly 
brought out and marshalled, would do honor to 
the stage. 

When I first became acquainted with Mr. 
Lamb, he lived, I think, in the Temple ; but I 
did not visit him then, and could scarcely, there- 
fore, be said to know him, until he took up his 
residence in Russell Street, Covent Garden. He 
had a first floor there, over a brazier's shop, — 
since converted into a booksellei"'s, — wherein he 
frequently entertained his friends. On certain 
evenings (Thursdays) one might reckon upon 
encountering at his rooms from six to a dozen 
unaffected people, including two or three men of 
letters. A game at whist and a cold supper, fol- 
lowed by a cheerful glass (glasses !) and " good 
talk," were the standing dishes upon those oc- 
casions. If you came late, you encountered a 
perfume of the " great plant." The pipe, 
hid in smoke (the violet amongst its leaves) , — a 



300 APPENDIX. 

squadron of tumblers, fuming with various odors, 
and a score of quick intelligent glances, saluted 
you. There you might see Godwin, Hazlitt, 
Leigh Hunt, Coleridge (though rarely), Mr. 
Robinson, Serjeant Talfourd, Mr. Ayrton, Mr. 
Alsager, Mr. Manning, — sometimes Miss Kelly, 
or Liston, — Admiral Burney, Charles Lloyd, 
Mr. Alsop, and various others ; and if Words- 
worth was in town, you might stumble upon him 
also. Our friend's brother, John Lamb, was oc- 
casionally there ; and his sister (his excellent 
sister) invariably presided. 

The room in which he lived was plainly and 
almost carelessly furnished. Let us enter it for 
a moment. Its ornaments, you see, are princi- 
pally several long shelves of ancient books ; 
(those are his " ragged veterans.") Some of 
Hogarth's prints, two after Leonardo da Vinci 
and Titian, and a portrait of Pope, enrich the 
walls. At the table sits an elderly lady (in 
spectacles) reading ; whilst from an old-fashioned 
chair by the fire springs up a little spare man in 
black, with a countenance pi"egnant with ex- 
pression, deep lines in his forehead, quick, lumi- 
nous, restless eyes, and a smile as sweet as ever 
threw sunshine upon the human face. You see 
that you are welcome. He speaks: "Well, 
boys, how are you? What's the news with 
you? What will you take?" You are com- 



APPENDIX. 301 

fortable in a moment. Reader ! it is Charles 
Lamb who is before you — the critic, the essay- 
ist, the poet, the wit, the large-minded human 
being, whose apprehension could grasp, without 
effort, the loftiest subject, and descend in gentle- 
ness upon the humblest ; who sympathized with 
all classes and conditions of men, as readily with 
the sufferings of the tattered beggar and the poor 
chimney-sweeper's boy as with the starry con- 
templations of Hamlet " the Dane," or the eagle- 
flighted madness of Lear. 

The books that I have adverted to, as filling his 
shelves, were mainly English books — the poets, 
dramatists, divines, essayists, &c., — ranging 
from the commencement of the Elizabeth period 
down to the time of Addison and Steele. B.e- 
sides these, of the earliest writers, Chaucer was 
there ; and, amongst the moderns, Wordsworth, 
Coleridge, and a few others, whom he loved. 

He had more real knowledge of old English 
literature than any man whom I ever knew. He 
was not an antiquarian. He neither hunted after 
commas, nor scribbled notes which confounded 
his text. The Spirit of the author descended 
upon him ; and he felt it ! With Burton and 
Fuller, Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne, 
he was an intimate. The ancient poets — chiefly 
the dramatic poets — were his especial friends. 
He knew every point and turn of their wit, all 



303 APPENDIX. 

the beauty of their characters ; loving each for 
some one distinguishing particular, and despising 
none. For absolute contempt is a quality of 
youth and ignorance — a foppery which a wise 
man rejects, and he rejected it accordingly. If 
he contemned anything, it was contempt itself. 
He saw that every one bore some sign or mark 
(God's gift) for which he ought to be valued by 
his fellows, and esteemed a man. He could pick 
out a merit from each author in his turn. He liked 
Heywood for his simplicity and pathos ; Web- 
ster for his deep insight into the heart ; Ben Jon- 
son for his humor ; Marlow for his " mighty 
line ; " Fletcher for his wit and flowing sweet- 
ness ; and Shakespeare for his combination of 
wonders. He loved Donne too, and Qiiarles, 
and Marvell, and Sir Philip Sidney, and a long 
list besides. 

No one will love the old English writers again 
as he did. Others may have a leaning towards 
them — a respect — an admiration — a sort of 
young" man's love : but the ti'ue relishing is over ; 
the close familiar friendship is dissolved. He 
who went back into dim antiquity, and sought 
them out, and proclaimed their worth to the 
world — abandoning the gaudy rhetoric of popu- 
lar authors for their sake, is now translated into 
the shadowy regions of the friends he worshipped. 
He who was once separated from them by a 



APPENDIX. 303 

hundred lustres, hath surmounted that great in- 
terval of time and space, and is now, in a man- 
ner, THEIR Contemporary ! 

* * * * .* 

The wit of Mr. Lamb was known to most per- 
sons conversant with existing literature. It was 
said that his friends bestowed moi'e than due 
praise upon it. It is clear that his enemies did it 
injustice. Such as it was, it was at all events 
Ms own. He did not "get up" his conversa- 
tions, nor explore the hoards of other wits, nor 
rake up the ashes of former fires. Right or 
wrong, he set to work unassisted ; and by dint of 
his own strong capacity and fine apprehension, 
he struck out as many substantially new ideas as 
any man of his time. The quality of his humor 
was essentially different from that of other men. 
It was not simply a tissue of jests or conceits, 
broad, far-fetched, or elaborate ; but it was a 
combination of humor with pathos — a sweet 
stream of thought, bubbling and sparkling with 
witty fancies ; such as I do not remember to 
have elsewhere met with, except in Shakespeare. 
There is occasionally a mingling of the serious 
and the comic in " Don Juan," and in other 
writers ; but they difler, after all, materially from 
Lamb in humor : — whether they are better or 
worse, is unimportant. His delicate and irrita- 
ble genius, influenced by his early studies, and 



304 APPENDIX. 

fettered by old associations, moved within a lim- 
ited circle. Yet this was not without its advan- 
tages ; for, whilst it stopped him from many bold 
(and many idle) speculations and theories, it gave 
to his writings their peculiar charm, their indi- 
viduality, their sincerity, their pure, gentle origi- 
nal character. Wit, which is " impersonal," 
and, for that very reason perhaps, is nine times 
out of ten a mere heartless matter, in him assumed 
a new shape and texture. It was no longer 
simply malicious, but was colored by a hundred 
gentle feelings. It bore the rose as well as the 
thorn. His heart warmed the jests and conceits 
with which his brain was busy, and turned them 
into flowers. 

Every one who knew Mr. Lamb, knew that 
his humor was not affected. It was a style — a 
habit ; generated by reading and loving the an- 
cient writers, but adopted in perfect sincerity, and 
used towards all persons and upon all occasions. 
He was the same in 18 10 as in 1834 — v^hen he 
died. A man cannot go on " affecting" for five 
and twenty years. He must be sometimes sin- 
cere. Now, Lamb was always the same. I 
never knew a man upon whom Time wrought so 
little. 



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